I wish your front page story (11 August) had not referred to “the Socialist party” without qualification. As a sidebar clarifies, former Militant is “Socialist Party of England and Wales” (Spew!). There also exists the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) which is not Trotskyist – in fact it existed before the Soviet Union, which it always opposed. I am a member of neither but feel sorry for anyone in the SPGB if folk muddled them up with Spew.
Bob Allaway
London
• Many of the letters on the subject of the 11-plus (11 August) fail to note that all schools in the tripartite system of education set out under the 1944 act were to be designated “secondary”. That is: secondary grammar, secondary technical and secondary modern. The prefix appears only ever to have been applied to the last of these, giving the impression of secondary quality.
Roger Wells
Stourbridge, West Midlands
• Re your Robert Nye obituary (2 August), may I add a mention of his 1976 anthology of sonnets for Faber? It was original and illuminating. He marvellously included Malcolm Lowry’s “Delirium in Vera Cruz” for which at least one reader will be always grateful.
Paul Collins
Horton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire
• According to Google Maps and Simon Usborne (G2, 11 August), “Wales is Wales is Wales” – demarcated without dispute. But in 1974 the whole of Monmouthshire was annexed to it without any local assent (just as happened when Crimea was annexed to Ukraine in 1954, and Goa to India in the 1960s, not to mention Berwick to England in the 19th century). Forget Barnoldswick (Letters, 11 August), this is big stuff!
Robin Milner-Gulland
Washington, West Sussex
• Beverley Mason (Letters, 11 August) recalls Mike Pender being reduced to tears by Leonard Cohen singing So Long, Marianne. As a flatmate of Mike in the 1970s I recall he too could reduce us to tears with his singing, and not in a good way.
Ian Watson
Glasgow
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