After checking the obituaries section of The Times of
London for war heroes, explorers and outdoorsmen, people I
know, writers and journalists, academics and
school-teachers—for The Times, like other British papers,
quite often does run non-paid obituaries even of lowly
school-teachers, missionaries, clergymen, and others who may
be supposed to have lived exemplary lives, not just the
politicians, scientists, businessmen, and celebrities who
dominate American obituary columns—I always turn to the
“Letters to the Editor” section. I don’t know if you can
positively say that this section of the paper is all that it
was back in its greatest days, when it was renowned for
lightly worn scholarship, wit, and the whimsicality of
lengthy correspondences on such subjects as the earliest day
of the year on which a cuckoo had been heard, but it’s still
pretty good. In particular, the letters that appear in the
cuckoo slot—that is, toward the bottom right-hand corner of
the page—are nearly always worth reading. They are often
witty, wise, even epigrammatic, or they tell you something
you didn’t know.

Around the time of President Bush’s “Surge” speech last
month, there was a brief correspondence there about how, in
Britain as in America, the marketing of everything from eggs
to television sets offers consumers sizes that run from
medium (or standard) to extra-large. Both Geof Wilkins of
Bowdon, Cheshire, and Jane S. Haworth of Thames Ditton,
Surrey, wrote to complain that bread, in particular, could
only be bought in medium, thick, and