If we were able to take into account, as Mr Layram does, people as yet in their infancy (Descartes, for example, was only three in 1599) or teens (Virginia Woolf, JS Bach, Handel, Joyce, Kafka, etc) who knows how many thousands of individuals, as yet unknown, could be included?
Jenny Jacobs
Harrogate, North Yorks.
Miles Layram's argument about cultural decline is not assisted by the sloppy way he constructed his lists. Some of those included, such as Blake and Kafka, were little-known in their own lifetimes.
Voltaire, included in the 1699 list, was five years old. Keats and Clare, included in the 1799 list, were four, and we have no way of knowing if their equivalents are alive today. Oscar Wilde was living in disgrace in 1899.
Brian Fewster
Leicester
bfewster@gn.apc.org
Miles Layram appears to be profoundly ignorant of earlier centuries - 1799: Leonard Euler, Carl Gauss; 1899: Isambard Brunel, Michael Faraday, James Maxwell, Max Planck, Robert Stevenson, Joseph Thompson, James Watt.
John G Steel
Guildford
jgsteel@iee.org
The 20th century has seen great changes in our cultural landscape - the artificial division between popular culture and high art has been removed, meaning that now the most relevant medium is popular music, something I suspect Mr Layram is ignorant of. 1999 has seen records from Six By Seven, Idlewild, Atari Teenage Riot and Belle and Sebastian, which will in the future be allotted their place in artistic history.
I have no doubt a similar correspondent, perhaps Mr Layram's grandchild, will argue 1999 was a wonderful year for culture and it is a shame that 2099 has not equalled it. Art has not ended, merely changed, and it is a pity that more people have not realised this.
Nicholas Jones
St Andrews, Fife
