This article is taken from the April 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Plane untrustworthy

A sincere “thank you” for the helpful, fact-filled (unlike Wikipedia) and ultimately depressing article “WHO WATCHES THE WIKIPEDIA EDITORS?” (MARCH).

As an example, I would like to point readers to the Wikipedia entry for Norwich City Station (checked 20 March 2023). It states, “The station was further damaged when a badly damaged USAF B24 Liberator bomber was deliberately crashed there to avoid greater loss of life”, with no reference to check this.

Suffice it to say that proper history books, for instance A J Wrottesley’s The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, and N J L Digby’s The Stations and Structures of The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway: Volume 2, Norwich to Peterborough and Little Bytham, a magisterial work of great depth and erudition, fail to mention this at all. 

While there are many easily found photos of the bombing raid, one would have thought that such a significant event as a deliberately crashed bomber would have been of great interest. How do you deliberately aim a badly damaged bomber at a specific site in the middle of a lot of housing with no recorded loss of life from crew or civilians on the ground?

In our house Wikipedia is avoided as much as possible, and rudely labelled “Wankipedia” as it is load of old cock.

R Lincoln

Groby, Leicestershire

Green screen

In his interesting article about Henry Green (AN OFF-KILTER VISIONARY, MARCH), Alexander Larman stated that “there is no definitive biography”. 

I would be interested to learn of what he thinks are the shortcomings of Jeremy Treglown’s biography, Romancing, published in 2000.

He also believes that none of Green’s books has been filmed. However, a film of Loving was made by BBC Northern Ireland in 1996, starring Mark Rylance. 

Graeme Creffield 

Hemel Hempstead, Herts

A swift correction

Fergus Butler-Gallie (SOUNDING BOARD, MARCH) quotes Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels but misplaces the condemnation of humans as “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin”. 

This does not occur in Book IV of the novel as might be expected with its portrayal of the Yahoos but at the close of Book Two Chapter VI where the King of Brobdingnag draws his scathing conclusion after listening to Gulliver eulogising his homeland. 

Swift’s irony is so pointed that at the beginning of the next chapter (Book Two Chapter VII) he has Gulliver point out that “I artfully eluded many of his questions and gave to every point a more favourable turn by many degrees than the strictness of truth would allow” which results in the reader wondering just how savage the King’s conclusions would have been had he been told the truth by Gulliver. 

Tony Macilwraith

Worcester 

Figures and form

Please remind Simon Heffer (HAVE WE LOST OUR MINDS? MARCH) that 29 Labour MPs were elected in 1906 three years before the People’s Budget, not two.

On the subject of Russian aggression (Mark Almond, THE BALLOON GOES UP, MARCH), India has “form”. She failed to condemn Moscow over Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Mark Taha

Ealing, London

Failing the test

I enjoyed reading Christopher Snowdon’s balanced perspective on grammar schools (THE ROOTS OF SCHOOL RAGE, MARCH). One of the issues mentioned, but not contested, was “Hitchens champions selection by ability”. There is no psychological reason that a test should be set at eleven years, it is for administrative purposes. The idea that development is set in stone at this age is untenable. 

The belief that one test, on one day, can accurately measure academic ability is problematic. For example, an individual may be ill or nervous, and fail to fulfil their potential. There is also confusion about the “construct validity” of the test: does it actually measure academic skills/intelligence? (Never mind the excessive private tutoring for the test which tests the idea of “selection” by ability.)

In a democratic country there would need to be some overwhelming reason to segregate people, and if that community is not even prepared to set up a comprehensive and valid diagnostic tool as the starting point, there may always be many people who will be critical of grammar schools.

Michael Moore

Loughton, Essex

Sideways mobility

Christopher Snowdon has some telling observations in his piece on grammar schools. The head of my South London grammar school wrote in his autobiography that he had seen an important part of his job being “to turn working-class boys into middle-class men.” One of my old schoolmates observed when I told him this, “Not necessary in my case.” Not necessary in most cases.

Harry Harmer

Shrewsbury, Shropshire