Slightly off target
From Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland, Bt Sir: It seems that the Questing Vole has lost the plot a little (19 April).
The piece refers to a 'Sir Vyvian NaylorLeyland' paying nervous attention to the war news from Iraq in the TV room at White's on the grounds that he had previously peppered his father in the arse with a shotgun and was thereafter nicknamed BagDad (I could not quite follow the logic here).
I hope you will not object to my putting the record straight: 1) My father, Sir Vivyan Naylor-Leyland, died 16 years ago.
2) He was never nicknamed Bag-Dad. That sobriquet was (perhaps a little insensitively) bestowed on my great-grandfather, the 1st baronet, who in 1886 accidentally shot his father stone dead with a rifle while on a stalking party in Scotland.
May I suggest that the Vole check his stories more thoroughly in future? (Lord Copper might have been quite proud of him, though.) Philip Naylor-Leyland Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
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