Same old

Sir: In Michael Simmons’s otherwise excellent yet alarming essay on ‘Benefits treats’ (11 April), one sentence spoiled the rest of my day: to say that pensioners are ‘protected from and by every government decision’ is maddening nonsense.

Pensioners are affected in exactly the same way as everyone else whenever the government of the day changes anything. Every time we switch on the heating, shop, fill up the car, pay any bill, we are suffering under the same government-fuelled inflation as everybody else. The chaotic finances of local government mean our council tax goes up along with everybody else’s. Every time tax thresholds are frozen, many of us pay more tax. When Isa limits are reduced, many are forced either to risk their capital or accept lower taxable rates elsewhere.

Pensioners who served their country and are in receipt of public-sector pensions find their relative income declining compared with those in work. Mr Simmons should remember that the new state pension is just 24.1 per cent of average earnings.

David Edwards

Norton sub Hamdon, Somerset

Lonely vigil

Sir: There has naturally been much excitement about the view of the dark side of the Moon observed by the four Artemis astronauts. However, many people, including David Whitehouse (‘Notes on…’, 11 April), seem to suggest that this was an entirely new experience. Has everyone forgotten the feat of the Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the Moon 14 times while Armstrong and Aldrin moonwalked, thus being completely on his own on the dark side for 14×40 minutes?

Verity Kalcev

Lindfield, West Sussex

Relish your own

Sir: I share Olivia Potts’s sadness over the demise of Gentleman’s Relish (‘Vale, Patum Peperium’, 11 April). There are alternatives out there but the best way is to make your easy and delightful own:

• 60g anchovy fillets – drained
• 60g unsalted butter – soft
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• ¼ tsp ground mace
• Small pinch grated nutmeg
• Black pepper (light grind)

A quick blitz in a food processor to form the much-loved paste. Enjoy!

Jeremy McKenna

Trowbridge, Wiltshire

French dressing

Sir: Ben Judah is right to argue that British politics could use an injection of Gaullism (‘De Gaulle or nothing’, 11 April). The core Gaullist virtues of patriotism, hardheaded pragmatism and a commitment to national sovereignty are in short supply today.

What he presents as Anglo‑Gaullism, however, reads more like a repackaged Labour platform. He calls for deeper ties with the EU. De Gaulle supported lowering customs barriers within Europe to stimulate growth, but he resisted any supranational authority which threatened French sovereignty. He would probably be dismayed by how much power modern France has ceded to Brussels.

Judah also proposes abandoning Trident, which depends on the United States, in favour of a shared nuclear programme with France. This, too, is far from Gaullist. De Gaulle could have built France’s nuclear force in partnership with other European nations, but he chose independence. A genuinely Gaullist British government would end reliance on American nuclear support, but not by replacing it with dependence on another European power. A sovereign Britain requires a strong military and an independent nuclear deterrent.

Marco Troisi

Belfast

Now take the biscuit

Sir: I like Gentleman’s Relish on a buttered Bath Oliver biscuit, but alas this is another British staple that seems to be going the same way. They used to appear in our local Waitrose occasionally, but are now rare. I understand the company that owns the rights to this marvel of the biscuit world produces a batch only irregularly, which doesn’t accord with supermarket auto-ordering systems. How about some Spectator support for the Bath Oliver?

Iain Cassie

Lymington, Hants

Duff redemption

Sir: In his article on crime fiction (Books, 4 April), I was delighted to see that Andrew Rosenheim brought readers’ attention to my grandfather Duff Cooper’s novel, Operation Heartbreak. However, when he says that he is remembered today only in the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize and as the husband of Lady Diana Cooper, he is doing him a grave injustice. In September 1938, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Cooper resigned from the government because he could not stomach the agreement that Neville Chamberlain had just brought back from Munich. Its terms allowed Hitler to march into Czechoslovakia and retake the Sudetenland, while France, Italy and Great Britain sat back and did nothing.

In resigning, he lost a job he loved and was vilified as a warmonger. In fact, his achievement was to understand that however much we all want peace, if it comes at too high a price it probably won’t last. A message as vital today as it ever was.

Artemis Cooper

Canterbury, Kent

On your way

Sir: I read John Power’s article ‘Wild things’ (11 April), about discovering the English countryside, a day after a thrilling find in west Suffolk. I’d spotted in an old book a picture of a little packhorse bridge on the route of the Icknield Way, England’s oldest highway. Ivy hid the medieval brick bridge, over which people and animals had travelled for centuries. Nobody else was around to savour the sight and I doubt local people even know it’s there. Am I alone in wondering why so many don’t relish and cherish England’s past?

Brian Emsley

Kennett

Song of praise

Sir: In spite of overburdened clergy, there are warm, welcoming churches in the countryside where everyone works to show the abundance of the love of Christ, and there is robust thinking and music (Letters, 11 April)! Come for a visit some time.

Norma Hartley Porter

St Mary’s, Hopesay, Shropshire

Truth obscured

Sir: Regarding the description of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s camera obscura in Robin Simon’s article (Arts, 11 April), I think it risks being misleading. While the device did fold into a book-like form when closed, lifting the lid would have unfolded the apparatus into a normal camera obscura, and therefore it is not true that ‘it must have appeared as if he were pretending to consult a text, while actually sketching the outlines of the sitter before him’, which would suggest deceptive intent. Like all camera obscuras, it required proper unfolding and optical alignment to function. There was nothing obscure about it.

Kenneth Charles Curmi

Budapest, Hungary