Letters | 7 May 2011

The Queen and I

Sir: I did not expect Andrew Roberts (‘The meaning of a marriage’, 23/30 April), to agree with my New York Review of Books article on the royal family but, since he quoted from it, I would have thought he might have read it all the way through. True, the piece begins by setting out the reasons why one might have assumed these to be ‘anxious times for the House of Windsor’, from austerity to the Duke of York’s travails. But the bulk of the essay is dedicated to explaining why ‘the appeal of the royals remains resilient’, citing the Queen’s near-perfect performance as head of state, her provision of continuity in a fast-changing world and her connection with Britain’s solitary defiance of Hitler in 1940 — sentiments that would, I suspect, have most Spectator readers nodding in agreement.

Jonathan Freedland
London



Pilate study


Sir: Bruce Anderson, who thinks he knows a lot about the historical Pilate, says he was tough, corrupt and ambitious, and therefore could not have behaved on good Friday as described by St Matthew and St John (‘What is truth?’, 23/30 April).