Spectator letters: PPE, Biblical bishops and Pamela Hansford Johnson

Degrees of ability

Sir: Nick Cohen has written an amusing piece on PPE (‘Crash course’, 27 September), marred by lazy journalism. I never said that Cameron was ‘my ablest pupil’, an impossible judgment to make. What I said was that he was ‘one of my ablest pupils’. He was also, incidentally, one of the nicest. And I cannot help feeling that a degree which produced two Nobel prize winners in economics — Hicks and Meade — and three of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century — Isaiah Berlin, Strawson and Dummett — must have a bit more to be said for it than Nick Cohen and other journalists suggest.
Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government, King’s College, London

How Balfour chillaxed

Sir: Adrian Wooldridge (‘The Cameron way’, 27 September) refers to one of Arthur Balfour’s hobbies — golf — but omits two others that were no less important to him: tennis (he played on Wimbledon’s Centre Court in his sixties) and being spanked by his mistress, Lady Elcho.