I’m not sure why Virginia Woolf is said by Alex Renton (School of hard knocks, 8 April) to have “censored” Roger Fry’s account of beatings at his prep school, Sunninghill. Her biography of Fry includes four full pages of Fry’s account, which spares no details of the blood or the excrement in sadistic “scenes of screaming, howling and struggling which made me almost sick with disgust” – as they do the reader. “Such is his own account,” Woolf says, “of what went on behind the facade of the letters from school”. Showing what went on behind facades was, manifestly, a large part of Woolf’s purpose; no censoring there.
Neil Corcoran
Emeritus professor of English literature, University of Liverpool
• TV Licensing may not send in bailiffs (Letters, 10 April) but it does aggressively pursue innocent (and elderly) non-TV-owners like myself, without the courtesy of providing either a freephone number or a prepaid envelope by which we might declare, without incurring personal cost, that we aren’t breaking the law. Inspectors are welcome, but they don’t always turn up; last time one didn’t turn up I was subsequently threatened with a court case.
Dr Brigid Purcell
Norwich
• Toby Wood (Letters, 10 April) points out that attendances at professional football and rugby union matches are larger than those for the County Championship. What he does not tell us is how large those crowds would be for matches starting on weekday mornings, nor how many cricket lovers purchase their seat through life or annual memberships. We cannot always be there, but the seat has been paid for.
Dr Dave Allen
Portsmouth
• Barry Glendenning might be pleased to know that not all rugby is “a form of organised chaos” with byzantine laws (Ignorance of the laws is no defence for erring referees, 10 April). Rugby league has much simpler laws which is one reason, some might say, it is so enjoyable to watch. Why not see for himself by attending one of the many games nationwide this Easter weekend?
John Perry
Silsden, West Yorkshire
• If Canada is set to change the words of its national anthem (G2, 10 April), can’t we do something about ours? Ever since we moved here over 50 years ago I’ve been uneasy about the verse that includes “rebellious Scots to quell”.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
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