LETTER:The right price to pay to visit the V&A

From Mr W. J. Rosengrave

Sir: I am almost 80 years old now. When I was a young boy, I lived in Bow, in the East End of London. On some Saturdays, or during the school holidays, I could sometimes coax 2d or 3d from my mother and with it take a return ticket on the train from Bow to Fenchurch Street and, with a friend, discover London, using our feet. Sometimes we even got as far as South Kensington, and that invariably meant a visit to the museums to which, in those days, entry was free. It was our heritage and our trip into another world.

I hate to think that nowadays children are denied these pleasures unless they pay, and mum and dad taking their couple of kids must make a bit of a hole in dad's pocket. Now it is being suggested that perhaps the entrance fee for the V&A may be even as much as pounds 10! It will certainly be out of the scope of poorer families to find that sort of money. Doesn't anything belong to the people any more?

Yours faithfully,

W. J. Rosengrave

Dagenham, Essex