The Archers may well need to reflect a post-Brexit reality for the UK very soon, but it’s not so much a British institution as an essentially English one with a debt to Trollope and Hardy (‘A peculiarly English epic’: the weird genius of The Archers, 15 December). Sean O’Connor’s view of the irritating Pip as a latter-day Bathsheba Everdene is an engaging one, and the maps of Hardy’s Wessex are surely the precursor of the folksy maps of Ambridge.
Welsh and Scottish characters have never fared well in Ambridge – the current storyline features a Welsh modern-day slaver; pregnant Elizabeth Archer was left stranded at a motorway service station by the dastardly Scottish businessman Cameron Fraser (a name that left us in no doubt of his origins); Jazzer, the loveable Glaswegian milkman, seems to have come out of a Sauchiehall Street music hall; Anisha, with her Glasgow West End accent, professional job and Sri Lankan heritage, was short-lived as a character.
Irish characters such as Paddy Redmond (the father of Jennifer’s scandalous illegitimate baby, Adam) and Siobhan (the dangerous liaison of Brian Aldridge) have fared little better.
I have always found that cheerful dum-di-dum theme tune is the signal for my family to give this Welsh listener a little social distance for 13 minutes, but can we look forward to a bit more even-handedness over the next 70 years?
Gillian Corcoran
Oxton, Wirral
• That The Archers reflects an inappropriate idea of English country life is inarguable, but this is not confined to the English. Such myths are found in many nations: France, notably, but also Russia, Spain and certainly the Roman republic. So the question should be: how does our so-called national myth differ from the others, and why?
John Starbuck
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
• The Archers is a virtually monocultural, largely apolitical, cosy world where everyone is articulate, children and schools barely exist, and the assistant in the village shop can suddenly have her own show on a local radio station. Moreover, Ambridge is a world where Boris Johnson is not acknowledged and Donald Trump never existed. Suits me.
Toby Wood
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
