Through the trapdoorIn her exploration of the origin of the Sweeney Todd story (”On a knife edge”, January 19), Louise Welsh doesn’t mention the 17th-century innkeeper, Jarman, of the Ostrich Inn in Colnbrook, Berkshire. Colnbrook was on the main London to Bath road and, by the 16th century, there were 10 coaching inns here including the Ostrich. Jarman had a bed that would tip the occupant through a trapdoor into boiling water or beer. In this way, he is supposed to have killed 60 travellers in order to rob them. He disposed of their bodies in the river.
Derek Tibbetts Chalfont St Peter, BuckinghamshireCheerful MiltonAndrew Motion, in his review of Anna Beer’s Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot (”The mystery of genius”, January 19), was concerned about the difficulties she had in “making Milton-at-home likeable or even vivid”. There’s a “dearth of intimate details”, and no warm “domestic portrait” - “nothing but the bare facts survive”. But there is always the report of that incomparable lightning-sketcher of 17th-century character, John Aubrey, in his Brief Lives: Milton’s “harmonicall and ingeniose Soul did lodge in a beautifull and well-proportioned body”. Later, though, he unfortunately was “visited with the Gowte, Spring and Fall”. He had, though, “an Organ in his howse; he played on that most. Of a very cheerfull humour. He would be chearfull even in his Gowte-fitts, and sing.”
Min Wild University of ExeterKilvert livesMark Bostridge’s piece on the Rev Kilvert (”Life on the wing”, January 19) was beautifully done, even though the wrong man was illustrated. I was surprised, however, that Bostridge made no mention of the Betjeman documentary on Kilvert and the subsequent BBC TV series in the late 1970s based on the diaries.
Martyn Berry
Sevenoaks, KentMark Bostridge describes Francis Kilvert’s diary as “fascinating”, “picturesque” and “enchanting”. I read the 1870-71 entries two years ago. Yes, it was fascinating, many scenes were picturesque, and it was at times enchanting - not least the picture of the father and his “wild” daughters at Mouse Castle, as well as his descriptions of walks in the Welsh hills. But what stays in my mind are the social conditions of the rural poor whom Kilvert writes about often from visits around the parish: the “black” hearths in cottages in deep winter, the hovels, the old woman so riddled with arthritis that she could only drag herself along the ground with her bucket of water from the well, and the old dying man Edward Evans moaning ceaselessly in his bed in dark, squalid conditions, while the only family member present, a little girl, sits among the ashes in the cold grate. It is to this book that I now refer when I want to conjure up a picture of what life was like before the welfare state.
Yvonne Widger Totnes, DevonI reprinted the three-volume edition of Kilvert’s diary, as a boxed set, in 2006; it is available at intertextuality.com.
Sean O’Donoghue O’Donoghue Books, Hay-on-WyeMe, subversive?I challenge Toril Moi’s statement that “in the 1950s and early 1960s, any young woman caught reading The Second Sex would be considered decidedly subversive” (”It changed my life”, January 12). This is wide of the mark. In England, many educated women from the mid-1950s onwards read everything by de Beauvoir; she was an important figure in our times. No one thought us subversive. It was the period before the term “women’s libber” became derogatory, when working for our liberation was one of the most important things in our lives - as well as having jobs, being married and bringing up children. For us, she was the pioneer of women’s liberation, an intellectual and advanced thinker. It was an added fascination that she was Sartre’s partner and had a well-publicised affair with Nelson Algren. The Mandarins was one of my favourite novels.
Penny Butler London%26#183; Send letters to Review, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. review@guardian.co.uk. Letters may be edited for reasons of space. Please include a postal address
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