London Bridge
Sir: Many thanks for your simply wizard London cover story [April 15]. As a native Londoner, I assure you that London has always been a wonderful town. But it needed a shrewd Yorkshireman and TIME to turn the spotlight on the old girl.
DOROTHY M. WILSON Wichita Falls, Texas
Sir: As Henry James wrote in 1881, "London on the whole is the most possible form of life."
JOHN AND PAMELA McBETH Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela
Sir: You aver that London is in the midst of a renaissance, that its theater is "in a second Elizabethan era." Nonsense. While it may be the world's pleasure capital, London smacks more of Las Vegas desperation than of Renaissance gusto. Compare the solitary John Osborne with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Webster. The contrast is humbling.
RICHARD S. REID Robert College Istanbul
Sir: Thousands of young people with the same haircut, the same facial expression, rush out every Saturday to buy what everyone else is wearing so they can look different. One can no longer have his own opinion: he must wait until he is told whether a movie is In before he can like it. He can't buy a suit unless it comes from Carnaby Street. He must listen to discordant noise sung by rude, pseudo-intellectual malcontents because it is the sound of his generation. He must be atheistic, anarchistic, hedonistic. Hooray for liberated British youth! I can hardly wait for the brainwashing machine to come to America so I can be liberated too.
SARA OSWALD Montclair, N.J.
Sir: You have looked decadence in the face without seeing it. If London today reminds you of Shakespeare's London, why? Shakespeare's London was animated by patriotism born of the achievements of Elizabethan sea captains. What victories do Londoners celebrate today? All the turned-on young men and women will burn out as quickly as a light bulb of British manufacture.
SCOTT W. WORKMAN Dallas
Sir: They have mini-packages of mini-cigarettes, minicars, miniskirts, even mini-turkeys. But your article was a queen-size mini-haha. Not to worry. As one Englishman remarked, "At least our American friends still love us." A pox, etc.
DANIEL H. SAKS London
Sir: SCENE six: Switched-on, Texas-born ex-Genius Donald Carroll, 25, looms in corner of Scene 3, glooms over trendy TIME exposure (tucked inside Chelsea football program) looking for minimis-takes. Spots Belgrade Square in map of Belgravia. Grins cheerily. End of scene.
DONALD CARROLL London
More About God
Sir: My deeply felt thank-you for a perceptive analysis of religion today [April 8]. It was a masterpiece of objectivity. a fresh breeze in an area often smothered in emotionalism. The question "Is God dead?" is a shocker. It stimulates thought and shakes one loose from the unthinking acceptance that is too often mislabeled "faith."
(MRS.) BETTY WASSER Spokane, Wash.
Sir: TIME'S story is biased, pro-atheist and proCommunist, shocking and entirely unAmerican.
R. A. ELLSWORTH Colonel, U.S.A. (ret.) Laguna Hills, Calif.
Sir: Spend some time reading the Word of God rather than the word of men, and you will be writing not about "the death of God" but about "the God of death." / Corinthians 15: 55-56.