UNFASHIONABLE ANGRIES
SIR,—I have just read Lady Judith Pakenham's article, 'The Unfashionable Angries' (Spectator, January 18), and find it both shocking and revealing. I use the word 'shocking' to describe her confession that despite an obviously liberal home background, she had hardly 'talked to anyone with a lower- class accent' until her late teens and knew nothing first hand of industrial Northern England until she was presumably in her twenties.
If the so-called educated and ruling classes in Britain learn so little about their own country and people, it is little wonder that in this fast-changing world British society has reached the stagnant state which Lady Judith deplores. We see, too, why so many of the emergent countries have rejected British claims to leadership which its ruling classes smugly, vainly, but erroneously; believe it is their God- given birthright to provide for the rest of the world. If they know so little. about their own country and countrymen, what can they know and under- stand of the rest of us? And on just what rest these claims to leadership--in Britain itself or else- where?
JOHN FRANCIS
122,e, Victoria, Australia
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