Letter: Coward's way
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Philip Hoare's paean for the values of Noel Coward (Comment, 1 February) was summed up more than three decades ago in a top newspaper's thundering headline over an editorial on the Chatterley trial: A DECENT RETICENCE. But in reality this is everything that the English do not need.
Since Shakespeare's time we have isolated ourselves from the beauties and terrors of myth and passion; we have covered the rawness of our nature in Prince of Wales check. Coward was right to indicate that an unrestrained peeling-back-to-nature was a mistake; but his denial of the mythic and ecstatic aspects to human existence reminds me of the king in Euripides' Bacchae, whose suppression of the rites of Dionysos drove him mad.
Somehow we need to integrate the mythic and the irrational into our lives. This was one of the things that the playwrights of the Fifties and Sixties were saying; this was the whole ethos of the Sixties - to me a "marvellous party" (yes!) where hierarchy, class distinctions and the urge to control others were jettisoned in favour of love, individuality, discovering common humanity, ending superiority and bossiness, and taking responsibility for one's own life.
After such discovery, the world of the stuff upper lip was about as appealing as a dutiful railway sandwich.
CHRISTOPHER J WALKER
London W14
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments