I read with interest your obituary of Denis Healey (5 October). In 1960, my parents took our family to France for the first time, on a camping holiday. Another British family arrived at the campsite and pitched their tents next to ours. Later that evening, while looking after younger members of the family, I got chatting to the father of the family in the next-door tent. I can’t recall what we chatted about but we got on well and talked for some time.
When we left the following day my father went to pay what we owed and to collect our passports, which we had had to deposit at the desk. Much to his amazement he was handed the passports of Denis Healey and family – obviously the neighbours on the campsite (they were the only other British family on the campsite). The passport matter was resolved and we continued on our way through France.
I have never forgotten that encounter. The Healeys were a family just like ours, and Denis and my father (who died 15 years ago) were almost exact contemporaries and had both done war service.
Had my father not been handed the wrong passports, I would never have known whom the interesting man I spoke to that day was. I have followed his career with interest since then.
Christine Rowntree
Birmingham
• In 1969/70, the John Smeaton comprehensive school opened in Leeds. Healey, who was the local MP, visited and spoke to more than 200 eleven- and twelve-year-olds. He enthralled them with stories of his experiences and brought fascinating mementoes of his travels. I was in my first teaching post, and two boys who were obsessed with aircraft were in my care. They asked him why he had taken a recent decision as defence secretary to scrap a popular aircraft (I forget the detail). He responded briefly but offered to speak to them afterwards to explain more fully. That he did for over 10 minutes. An act of great generosity that defined the man for me.
Ken Wales
Preston
• It has been frequently claimed that Denis Healey was a champion of the British “independent nuclear deterrent”. Although he may have been so in the 1970s, he later changed his mind. In his Fabian lecture in 1985, he said: “There is now a growing feeling among military experts that Nato must look in a different direction – towards a non-provocative strategy of conventional deterrence which could protect Nato territory without using nuclear weapons if deterrence should fail. We in the Labour party share this feeling.” Who can doubt on which side of the debate about Trident he would be today.
Nicholas Humphrey
Cambridge
• In a BBC interview in December 2008, Denis Healey said that as prime minister he would not have ordered a nuclear retaliation even if Britain had already been attacked with nuclear weapons: “That, I’m afraid, is no reason for doing something like that. Because most of the people you kill would be innocent civilians.” In other words, the old Atlanticist bruiser agreed with Jeremy Corbyn on this issue.
Willy McCourt
London
• Denis Healey was always a challenge in a television interview, particularly during a one-camera shoot. Not least because during the reverse shot (when the camera is on the reporter and the back of the interviewee’s head), he would quietly swear under his breath and pull funny faces. I always collapsed in giggles. And, often, so did he. Great fun.
Tim Friend
Former BBC, ITN and Sky News reporter
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