27 SEPTEMBER 1997, Page 30

Cuckoo time

Sir: How many dissenters are there (`Diana: the other nation', 20 September)? Mr Heathcoat Amory may rest assured that we run into many millions and that the mourning phenomenon barely touched us, beyond feelings of shock for vivid young life lost in such an appalling accident, and great sorrow for her sons.

And as I fought my way into or out of the Underground at High Street Kensington during that period, through a sea of bob- bing, blank-eyed members of that part of the nation to which I do not belong, I was forcibly reminded of John Wyndham's tale of alien takeover, The Midwich Cuckoos. Margaret Currey

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