Observations on Lord and Lady Powell of Bayswater

In the Christmas issue of the New Statesman, we (or more precisely, I) accused Lord (Charles) Powell, the former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, and his wife Carla, of pronouncing "Powell" as "Pole" ("Beware a girl who calls herself Kimberly", 13 December). We contrasted their snobbery and affectation with the plain-speaking manliness of Jonathan Powell, one of Tony Blair's advisers, who pronounces "Powell" "Powell". We couldn't have been more wrong.

To begin with, Carla Powell has always pronounced "Powell" as "Powell". Her husband doesn't pronounce "Powell" as "pole" but more like "Pohwell". He is perfectly entitled to do so. His family is from Wales and his paternal grandfather pronounced "Powell" as "Pohwell", as many in Wales do to this day. Far from being a snob, he was a clergyman with a distaste for the vanities of this world.

Jonathan Powell began life by pronouncing Powell as "Pohwell" but then changed it to "Powell". We are tempted to accuse him of feigning a pseudo- egalitarian blokiness to further his career. But we won't. Instead, we apologise to the assorted Powells and Pohwells and to the people of Wales.

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