Spectator letters: The modern equivalents of Unity Mitford

Unity’s modern equivalents

Sir: I don’t understand why David Pryce-Jones is still banging on about the Mitfords (‘You are always close to me’, 28 March). Of course my great-aunt Unity was misguided and wrong to adore Adolf Hitler. She was not alone, though. In the 1930s millions of Germans and many non-Germans were equally in thrall to the new National Socialist government. A lot of people were taken in by the propaganda.

Perhaps Mr Pryce-Jones could more usefully get his few hundred quid fee from The Spectator by writing an article about Unity’s modern equivalents — the idiotic British girls who are travelling to Syria to help Isis, the Nazis of our own era.
Valentine Guinness

London W2

Bobo Hitler

Sir: David Pryce-Jones is wrong to postulate that Unity Mitford might have become the Hon. Mrs Adolf Hitler. She would, as an Hon. in her own right, have become the Hon. Mrs Hitler.
Christopher Bellew

London W6

The art of the job ad

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Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

Sir: I was amused by Quentin Letts’s story about lefty waffle used for job ads in the Church Times (‘How to pick a vicar’, 21 March). G.K. Chesterton understood the art, saying: ‘If I choose to head an article “An inquiry into the conditions of Mycenaean civilisation, with special reference to the economic and domestic functions of women before and after the conjectural date of the Argive expedition against Troy”, I really have no right to complain if (when I send it to the Chicago Daily Scoop) they alter the title to “How Helen of Troy did the housekeeping”.’
Greg Waggett

Clare, Suffolk

Wanted: parish priest

Sir: Quentin Letts could be voicing the problem we have in our group of parishes (four churches). There hasn’t been a vicar for 18 months. We have done very well, with all manner of folk taking the services, and in one of the smallest we manage three Book of Common Prayer evensongs a month.