Writing Letters to The Times

It is the latest in a long line of letters Madeline has had published in The Times in the last 20 years or so, on a variety of topics as diverse as the causes of obesity, the risks of marrying a cousin, the aerobic effects of housework and the perils of over-reliance on sunglasses.

Madeline says: “On six days every week I read The Times and it is not a passive occupation.  It is like having a conversation with interesting people.   One gets to know the regular columnists and I often write in response to one of their pieces.  Or some report of scientific or social interest will appear and I want to muscle in on the discussion.  The Letters page itself is a great source of argument, criticism or approval because other readers are all taking part in this great conversation, this daily symposium.

“Every day something fires my curiosity or amazement or anger.  I have to have my say.  The copies I keep of everything I’ve sent in make a nice fat file and I reckon about one in ten of them have been accepted.  I try to  stick to just one point, even if I want to write more. 

“There is a typical writers’ arrogance I suppose in thinking that other people ought to have the benefit of my opinions.  I grew up in an extended family where discussion and argument took place all the time.  You learned to be pushy about getting your own words in edgeways.  So it is in my blood, and if I had nothing else to do the Letters Editor would be bombarded.”

Here is the full text of Madeline’s latest letter:-

Sir,

Robert Crampton (Times2 November 12)  writes of how undergraduates at Edinburgh University are being “shamed by more privileged students” and describes how he himself, when at Oxford University, experienced a mild version of this “ruling class antagonism”. 

Does he realise it also happens the other way round? 

I have sometimes come up against a brick wall of prejudice, a conviction that I could not possibly understand what it was like to be poor or working class. If they only knew!

I went to a large independent girls’ school, and in adult life have often been the victim of deliberate sneering remarks about public schools.  It was usually done in a roundabout way.  Directing their criticism at some third party, not present at the time, the comments were along the lines of “Of course he’s utterly useless. What can you expect? He went to a public school!”  which was clearly meant to be an indirect dig at my education. 

My education in fact included nearly every type of school available in this country:  three state (“council”) schools of various degrees of roughness, one small private school, even one term with a private tutor, but ending up, on a scholarship, in the aforementioned “public” school.

Madeline Macdonald