Your article (The vanishing ‘red mirage’: how Trump’s election week soured, 7 November) misinterprets the legend of King Canute and the tide. While we history teachers have grappled for years with different spellings and pronunciations of Canute’s name (Cnut), misrepresentation of his character is more common.
The legend goes that Canute, with his fawning advisers, had his throne brought to the seashore. He commanded the tide to halt at his feet and not wet his robes – when it did not he commented on the worthlessness and fallibility of kings compared with the omnipotence of God, and chastised his advisers for their sycophantic behaviour.
This is often misinterpreted as showing Canute as vain and deluded, and used in the media to reference to public figures desperately trying to stop something they are powerless to affect – in this case, Trump and the election slipping away from him. The reality is that Canute ruled for 19 years and is seen as a relatively successful Anglo-Saxon monarch, often known by the epithet “the Great”.
How we yearn for such leaders in Britain today. Canute that is, not Trump.
Nicholas Mandalos
Forest Hill, London
