Stinking rich
Sir: It was heartening to read Joanna Ritchie's letter (12 July) complaining about David Fingleton's account of his lavish din- ners in Paris. However, I fear that she lets you off too lightly, for The Spectator is rid- dled with articles which glorify pleasurable experiences, most of which are not avail- able to the poor, nor to many of those in the Third World (former presidents, of course, excepted).
You persist in squandering space on the- atrical, operatic and balletic productions mostly in London, but some even abroad where the price of admission is beyond the means of most citizens of the world, even before taking into account the cost of trav- elling from Sunderland, Bath, Rwanda or wherever. You review exhibitions of pic- tures, which shamefully unsubsidised artists are forced to sell for prices which we can- not afford and which will then disappear into private collections beyond our sight.
Worse, you devote page after page of your journal to reviews of books, some of which are so expensive as to approach the cost of a Paris meal. To rub salt in the wound, most of the books which you
LETTERS
choose to review are published only in English and are therefore doubly inaccessi- ble to many in the Third World.
Finally, should we choose to buy South African wine (strangely improved since democracy came) from Mr Waugh's club, we are stigmatised as 'paupers' while he swills his burgundies, which in true elitist fashion are not produced in sufficient quantities for everyone to enjoy even if they were able to afford £25 the bottle.
You must have no heart to feel no shame at the sybaritism of your contributors. I have often been tempted to write, but have been so prostrate with disgust that I could scarcely put pen to paper. Thank goodness that in Ms (I presume) Ritchie we have at last found a voice for those of us who buy The Spectator only because New Society no longer exists, The New Statesman is too Blairite and Marxism Today has gone soft. Yet the spiritual uplift which we enjoy from the high-minded articles in earlier pages is always tainted by the knowledge that, how- ever uninteresting the pages which follow, we might be tempted to peek into the back half, to be appalled and sickened by descriptions therein of luxury and con- sumption beyond the dreams of the masses. Have you considered selling the front half on its own for half-price?
Glenn Wellman
15 College Road, Dulwich, London SE21
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