A Bax revival would be music to my ears | Brief letters
Brief letters: Arnold Bax | Country diary | Thatcher toilet roll | Permanent secretaries | Daylight shrubbery
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Thanks for highlighting the shameful neglect of Arnold Bax in our musical life (It’s unfashionable, wild and wilful…, 22 April). And the BBC is guilty of this too, occasionally allowing Tintagel and smaller works on air or in a Prom. If conductors would follow the efforts of Bryden Thomson and Vernon Handley, and throw a symphony or two into their programmes, a whole new audience would emerge. There is a vast, almost cinematic, visual quality in Bax’s music.
Peter Davis
Wester Skeld, Shetland
• What a wonderful evocation of a chilly spring morning by Mark Cocker (Country diary, 21 April), celebrating the interconnectedness of the world of birdsong and confirming that every journey in space is also one in time.
Joe Unsworth
Newcastle upon Tyne
• A toilet roll with Margaret Thatcher’s face had pride of place in my bathroom in the 1980s (Letters, 21 April). It remained unused and led to much comment, not all of it humorous, from visitors. Then I let a couple of Guardian-reading friends stay while I was away on holiday.
Jim Hatley
Brighton, East Sussex
• Perhaps the civil service needs to think of a better title than “permanent secretary” for the head of a government department (Report, 22 April).
Ron Jacob
London
• Overheard recently in a garden centre: “Prices in here are daylight shrubbery.”
Tom Gilsenan
Dublin, Ireland
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