17 MARCH 2007, Page 30

High Table hauteur

Sir: As the wife of a Cheviot farmer, I read with interest Charles Moore’s ‘Notes’ of 10 March. Hugh Trevor-Roper taught me history at Oxford. After I married and settled in Roxburghshire, he and Xandra sometimes asked us to dinner at their house near Melrose. On one occasion a fellow guest, a Borders farmer called John Scott, persistently addressed his host as ‘Roper’. The Regius Professor was not amused.

‘My name is Trevor-Roper,’ he insisted. ‘Well,’ replied the farmer, ‘my name is Montagu-Douglas-Scott, but Scott has always been good enough for me.’ The Voltaire of St Aldate’s was silenced.

Emma Tennant

Newcastleton, Roxburghshire