Letter of the week: The stories we tell

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Every now and then an article in a newspaper or quality magazine such as yours is so profound, moving or enlightening that one is forced to put pen to paper. Zuzanna Lachendro’s marvellous and deeply poignant account (Personal Story, 11 April) of her great-grandfather’s resistance to the Nazis resulting in his stay at Auschwitz is just such an article.

As the grandson of a Jewish man who had the prescience to leave Nazi Germany before the war, I have a keen interest in the Holocaust and the systematic murder of European Jews. However, it is equally important to recognise that many other non-Jews suffered terribly both in and out of the camps. Many negative comments have been made about how Jews were treated in Poland before and after the war, so it is vital that pieces like Lachendro’s give balance and show the heroism, resistance and fearless benevolence of so many Polish people, including her great-grandfather.

If it hasn’t already been written, there is a real need for a full-length book about Michał Piksa and others like him.
Tim Devas, Oakham, Rutland

Leviathans

Andrew Marr warns against the West’s cultural severing from modern Russia (The NS Essay, 11 April), asking when the reader last watched a new Russian film. I believe, for me, it was 2022, when British cinemas showed the Finno-Russian Compartment No 6. Yura Borisov, star of the recent, Oscar-winning Anora, features, alongside other Russian actors. He also has a role in the less well-known Kalashnikov, or AK-47, which was partially filmed in occupied Crimea. Perhaps Marr also missed screenings of the propaganda film Russians at War at international film festivals, and Elena Kostyuchenko’s memoir I Love Russia.

If Marr still misses eastern European cultural output, he need not look further than Ukraine. London’s Royal Academy of Arts had a brilliant exhibition last summer on modernist Ukrainian art, showcasing artists who resisted Russian imperialism. I have been enjoying reading Andrey Kurkov, whose Kyiv trilogyis helping place Ukraine on the European literary map.
Victoria Lisek, London NW11

Off the post

Jason Cowley’s analysis of “the slow death of the Royal Mail” (These Times, 11 April) is, I suggest, mirrored in the parlous state of Post Office buildings. Today, to purchase a stamp, one is more often than not required to queue through an impenetrable forest of trivia and trinkets, before reaching a small, understaffed counter, buried at the back of a nondescript shop. In Australia, from where I have just returned, the postal service is owned by the government. Post offices retain a functional sense of civic pride and are often prominent landmarks, as well as offering multiple staffed counters.
James J Mercer, Swanage, Dorset

Lest they be angels

I am not convinced by John Gray’s assertion (The NS Essay, 11 April) that the passing of liberal humanism is the fundamental fact of the age. For me, it is the growth of neoliberalism. However, the pessimism of his article found an antidote in Jeanette Winterson’s Diary: “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
Michael Leigh, London SW18

A question of innovation

Dr Phil Whitaker sets out the case for why the NHS should be a late adopter of medical innovations (Special Report, 11 April). His arguments do not stand up to scrutiny for three key reasons. The first is that the UK is already a slow adopter. Only 56 per cent of the medicines approved by the primary EU regulator between 2019 and 2022 were available to English patients in 2024. The second is that this slow uptake does not improve patient outcomes. The UK’s treatable and avoidable mortality is the second-worst in the G7. Several factors contribute to this, but it is hard to argue that the low use of new medicines is helping improve health outcomes. Finally, the UK already pays some of the lowest prices and spends a lower proportion of its health budget on medicines than its peers.

Ensuring people get the right medicines at the right time, in a responsible way, must be a key part of helping the NHS tackle the pressures it faces, improving patient outcomes and boosting jobs and growth.
Dr Amit Aggarwal, medical director, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry

God in the age of AI

In his essay “How to think in the age of AI” (The Ideas Essay, 11 April), David Edmonds writes of the reaction to CP Snow’s polemic about two cultures: “Sneery humanities types laughed about the cultural illiteracy of the expanding scientific and technical classes.” He also writes: “Most sixth-formers are exposed to philosophy only indirectly, via religious studies (a blend that is almost as irksome as discovering philosophy in the self-help section of bookshops).” Now that is sneery.

I think of Elizabeth Anscombe, a committed Catholic and Wittgenstein’s most brilliant disciple. I am confident that if she had been asked by the taxi driver whom Bertrand Russell chose loftily not to answer, “Well, Miss Anscombe, what’s it all about?”, she would have replied crisply, as was her manner, “The will of God.”
Bill Myers, Leicester

Post-Hockneyism

Michael Prodger (The Critics, 11 April) thinks Hockney was too involved in the selection of his works for the new retrospective in Paris, and that “a different guiding hand could have shown Hockney to better effect”. Well, possibly. There will be further retrospectives of Hockney’s works long after he is dead, when others will perhaps show him “to better effect”. But let’s enjoy this exhibition for what it is – Hockney’s personal choice of the works on display. Surely it would be of great interest to know which of their own works artists such as Van Gogh or Titian or Turner would have selected for a retrospective?
John Boaler, Calne, Wiltshire

Gray area

Your Subscriber of the Week (4 April) would like to see “more stories of hope” in the New Statesman. At the same time, John Gray is his favourite writer. Something has to give!
Giovanni Vitulli, Welwyn Garden City

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