The Duchess at Chatsworth in 2005 Photo: REX

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has died aged 94, was the youngest and last of the celebrated Mitford sisters, and the chatelaine of Chatsworth, the “Palace of the Peak” in Derbyshire, which from the 1950s onwards she made into both a glorious public spectacle and, really for the first time, a consummately stylish private home.

She was born Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford on March 31 1920, the sixth daughter of the eccentric 2nd Lord Redesdale, well-known to readers of Nancy Mitford’s novels as “Uncle Matthew”. “Debo” (as she was always known) was repeatedly assured throughout her childhood by her eldest sister Nancy that “everybody cried when you were born” on account of her being yet another girl.

^{The Mitford family in 1933 with Debo on bottom right}

Debo took refuge in quaintly odd pursuits. Another sister, Jessica (“Decca”) Mitford, described her spending “silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen’s face when it is laying an egg, and each morning she methodically checked over and listed in a notebook the stillbirths reported in the vital statistics columns of The Times”.

As the youngest in a family of seven, Debo was constantly and mercilessly teased, despite the bellowing championship of her father. She was passionately fond of the country and country pursuits, and did not suffer from the brilliant, restless boredom so well-documented by her sisters. None of the girls was sent to school, as their father thought education for girls unnecessary; a succession of governesses was employed, one of whom, Miss Pratt, had her charges playing Racing Demon daily from 9am until lunchtime.

^{Debo on her way to Ascot in 1938 (TOPHAM PICTUREPOINT)}

As a girl Debo was a fine skater, and was invited to join the British junior team; but the idea was vetoed by her mother. As an adolescent she witnessed several scandals surrounding her sisters — Diana’s divorce and remarriage, Jessica’s elopement, Unity’s involvement with Hitler — as well as the disintegration of her parents’ marriage.

She was famous for having chanted as a child, in moments of distress: “One day he’ll come along, the Duke I love.” When she married Lord Andrew Cavendish in 1941, however, he was a mere second son. Debo wrote to her sister, Diana Mosley, then in Holloway prison: “I expect we shall be terrificly [sic] poor but think how nice to have as many dear dogs and things as one likes without anyone to say they must get off the furniture.”

Debo remained surrounded by dogs for the rest of her life. In The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth (1982), the delightful and bestselling book she wrote, in between doing a lot of sums to illustrate that 365 ordinary-sized residences could fit into The House, with its 7,873 panes of glass and 53 lavatories, the Duchess took care to inform the reader: “It’s a terrible place to house-train a puppy.”

^{The Duke and Duchess on their wedding day in 1941 (RAYMONDS)}

In 1944 Andrew’s elder brother was killed in action, and in 1950 the 10th Duke unexpectedly died. The Devonshires were left with 80 per cent death duties which took 17 years to settle. In 1959 they moved to Chatsworth, uninhabited since before the war.

When she had first seen the house after the war she had thought it “sad, dark, cold and dirty. It wasn’t like a house at all, but more like a barracks.” It had not been redecorated for decades, and during the war had been home to a girls’ boarding school.

But Debo embraced her role of chatelaine gaily, as she set about redecorating the house. “Debo has become the sort of English duchess who doesn’t feel the cold,” reported Nancy, disconsolately.

The Duchess was both beautiful and deceptively literate, although exceptionally modest. Lucian Freud painted her when she was 34, and Debo used to delight in the story of how an old woman was heard remarking, as she stood before the painting: “That’s the Dowager Duchess. It was taken the year before she died.” When the painting was completed, Freud allowed the Duke and Duchess to see it at his studio. “Someone else was already there,” she later recalled. “Andrew looked long at the picture until the other man asked, ‘Who is that?’ ‘It’s my wife.’ ‘Well, thank God it’s not mine’.”

She also sat for Annigoni, to whom she found herself apologising for her face: “I know it’s not the sort you like.” The artist replied, not very graciously: “Oh well, it doesn’t matter, it’s not your fault.”

The Duchess kept aloof from her family’s literary and political pursuits. She visited her Fascist sister Diana in prison, and her Communist sister Decca in California, keeping a light touch with both.

After visiting Decca and doing the rounds of her Communist friends, Debo sent Decca a photograph of herself and her husband, dressed in their ducal robes for a coronation, garlanded with orders, chains and jewels, staring stonily ahead. Beneath the photo she wrote: “Andrew and me being active.”

Nancy used to address letters to her sister “Nine, Duchess of Devonshire”, her contention being that Debo never developed beyond the mental age of nine. Certainly the Duchess always maintained that she never read books and that her favourite reading matter was the British goatkeepers’ monthly journal, Fancy Fowl magazine and Beatrix Potter.

The epigraph in her book The House is taken from Hobbes, who was tutor to the 2nd and 3rd Dukes of Devonshire: “Reading is a pernicious habit. It destroys all originality of sentiment.”

^{The Duchess at Chatsworth in 2003 (CAMERA PRESS)}

Chatsworth, however, was always filled with literati, and Patrick Leigh Fermor, a great friend, was determined that Debo was a closet reader, who sneaked books the way alcoholics sneak whisky. As a writer, she was a natural storyteller with a knack for the telling phrase and a delight in human eccentricities.

Certainly The House is a wonderfully rich and beautifully written work. It is organised around a Handbook of Chatsworth written in 1844 in the form of a letter from the “Bachelor Duke” (the 6th) to his sister and is full of very funny accounts of the foibles of earlier dukes and duchesses. Among other stories, it chronicles the war waged against woodworm by the wife of the 9th Duke (the former Lady Evelyn Fitzmaurice). Believing concussion to be the answer, the formidable beldame kept a little hammer in her bag to bang the furniture where they lurked.

The Duchess showed acute commercial flair in raising money for the Chatsworth estate, making a nonsense of her sister Nancy’s generalisation in Noblesse Oblige that aristocrats are no good at making money. She presided over the bread, cake, jam and chutney industries which grew up to feed the farm shop, which was described by the late Hugh Massingberd in The Daily Telegraph as “every greedy child’s idea of what a shop should be”.

Although the house had been open to the public ever since it was built, it was not until 1947 that the revenue from visitors went towards its upkeep. In 1973 the Duchess set up the Farmyard at Chatsworth, “to explain to the children that food is produced by farmers who also look after the land and that the two functions are inextricably mixed”. A little boy from Sheffield watched the milking, then told the Duchess: “It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ll never drink milk again.”

Visitors to Chatsworth are able to buy items such as souvenirs, books, porcelain, knitwear, while the Farm Shop sells estate produce. A mail order business was established, along with cafés, restaurants and a commercial catering business.

Chatsworth Carpenters was an especially successful venture. The Duchess, in her gardener’s apron, was for many years a familiar sight at the Chelsea Flower Show, where she was to be seen busily selling furniture fit for a stately home to the owners of small town gardens.

The 11th Duke once observed: “My wife is far more important to Chatsworth than I am.” He added: “She is on the bossy side, of course; but I’ve always liked that in a woman.” She dealt heroically with her husband’s philandering nature and his weakness for alcohol, and the marriage was a happy one.

Despite living in a house overflowing with masterpieces by such artists as Rembrandt, Veronese, Murillo, Poussin and Reynolds, the Duchess always maintained that Beatrix Potter was her favourite artist, and Miss Potter’s enchanted world may indeed be the key to appreciating the genius loci of Chatsworth.

^{The Duchess with a herd of British Limousin cows on the Chatsworth estate (ANDREW CROWLEY)}

The Duchess was an ardent conservationist of vernacular architecture and was president of the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust. She also chaired the Tarmac Construction Group and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

Her devotion to making Chatsworth a viable financial concern was well rewarded in 1981 when a charitable trust, capitalised by the sale of certain treasures, was established to preserve The House for posterity.

In 2001 the Duchess published Counting My Chickens… and other home thoughts, a collection of sharply observed musings on Chatsworth, gardening, poultry, dry stone walling, bottled water, the United States, Ireland, the Today programme, the Turner Prize and other topics. On the modern fashion for hiring business consultants, she wryly observed: “He arrives from London, first class on the train… Most probably he has never been this far north, so the geography and the ways of the locals have to be explained, all taking his valuable time. After a suitable pause of a few weeks (he is very busy being consulted) a beautiful book arrives, telling you what you spent the day telling him.”

After her husband’s death in 2004 she published a poignant tribute in Memories of Andrew Devonshire (2007). Other publications included In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (2008); Home to Roost … and Other Peckings (2009), a collection of occasional writings; and Wait for Me!… Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister (2010). She was also a contributor to The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. Her last book, All in One Basket, which brought together two earlier volumes of occasional writings, was published in 2011.

The Duchess claimed to buy most of her clothes at agricultural shows, adding: “After agricultural shows, Marks & Spencer is the place to go shopping, and then Paris. Nothing in between seems to be much good.”

Her dislikes included magpies; women who want to join men’s clubs; hotel coat-hangers; and drivers who slow down to go over cattle grids. She regretted the passing of brogues, the custom of mourning, telegrams, the 1662 Prayer Book, pinafores for little boys and Elvis Presley (“the greatest entertainer ever to walk on a stage”).

In 2003 she published The Chatsworth Cookery Book, introducing it with the words: “I haven’t cooked since the war.”

Debo Devonshire was appointed DCVO in 1999.

She is survived by her son Stoker, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, and by two daughters.

Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, born March 31 1920, died September 24 2014

It was heartening to hear Ed Miliband say in his speech that tackling climate change is a passion of his and that solving it could be a massive job-generating opportunity (Report, 24 September). The inevitable question of how to pay for this can be tackled by writing to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. He is on record as saying that if the government requested it, then the next round of QE could be used to buy assets other than government debt. Miliband said that the Green Investment Bank would be used to fund green economic activity and so Labour should allow it to issue bonds that could then be bought by the Bank using “Green QE”. Similarly, local authorities could issue bonds to build new energy-efficient public homes funded by “Housing QE”.

The Bank has already pumped £375bn of QE into the economy, but with little tangible benefit to the majority. Imagine the galvanising effect on the real economy of every city and town if a £50bn programme of infrastructural QE became the next government’s priority. This could make every building in the UK energy-tight and build enough highly insulated new homes to tackle the housing crisis. It would provide a secure career structure for those involved for the next 10 years and beyond, massive numbers of adequately paid apprenticeships and jobs for the self employed, a market for local small businesses, and reduced energy bills for all. Such a nationwide programme would generate tax revenue to help tackle the deficit, but in an economically and socially constructive way. Best of all it would not be categorised as increased public funding, since QE spending has not and would not be counted as government expenditure.
Colin Hines
Convener, Green New Deal Group

• Ian Martin (I can’t remember a more spineless opposition, 24 September) sums up the feeling of millions of working-class people. Millions are desperate to get rid of the current government, yet at the same time depressed because they don’t believe a Labour government would mark a real change. As Ian says: “Labour’s message to the electorate is clear – austerity is the new reality.”

To get rid of the Tories many, like Ian is clearly considering doing, will vote Labour in the general election next year. Others will abstain from the elections in disgust, or even vote for the rightwing stockbrokers of Ukip to express their anger. One clear result from Scotland is proof that it is not “apathy”, but disillusionment with the diet of pro-big-business, pro-austerity parties on offer, that is responsible for falling election turnouts. But trade unionists and socialists cannot continue to accept a choice between parties whose policies are so similar you can barely get a fag-paper between them. That only leaves the road open to Ukip and its ilk. That is why the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC – to which Ian refers) was co-founded by the late Bob Crow to begin to build an electoral voice for working-class people.  In May 2014, TUSC fielded 560 local election candidates in nearly 90 towns and cities, in the widest socialist challenge to Labour for 60 years. In May 2015 – for both the general and the local elections – we are going to up our game, aiming to stand even more widely, to ensure austerity is not unchallenged at the ballot box.
Dave Nellist
Chair, TUSC

• Ian Martin highlights the dramatic change that followed the coalition legislating the five-year parliament. By removing the opportunity to force a general election at any time following a government defeat, for example when the government lost the vote on alterations to the “bedroom tax”, this government has removed the incentive for persuasive, adversarial discussion in the house as the government can rely on the “five-year rule” to override the opposition. There is no longer the tense, adversarial atmosphere that used to exist and so we get the impression that the opposition is “spineless”.
David Hurry
Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex

• Ian Martin’s “spineless opposition” has a good deal more to offer to my constituents in a hard-pressed ward in Newcastle’s West End than he allows. From the scrapping of the bedroom tax to rescuing the NHS, new social and council house building to dealing with the problems of the private rented sector, better training and job creation, and above all fairer funding for local council services slashed by the Tory/Lib Dem government, a Labour government will make a huge difference. The author of The Thick of It may not recognise it; the people who live in the thick of it will if Labour wins next May.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords

• Smoking costs the NHS between £2.7bn and £5.2bn a year, and Mr Miliband wants to add a windfall tax to the £9.5bn annual excise revenue to help fund the NHS. Obesity cost the NHS £16bn in 2007, but I hear no calls from him to tax the supermarkets that sell us the processed food that makes us fat, or calls for taxes (or at least reduced subsidies) on the sugar that goes into them. The link between sugar and obesity is now as clear as the link between tobacco and cancer. The time to act on obesity is now, and taxing those who cause us harm would be a popular and sensible policy.
Richard Cooper
Chichester, West Sussex

• Owen Jones (Memo to Miliband: Britain’s social order is bankrupt, 22 September) rightly points out that, since the start of the recession, the richest 1,000 people in the country have doubled their wealth to £519bn, as much as the annual earnings of two-thirds of the British workforce, but it is even worse than that. We now have more billionaires per capita than any other country and London has more billionaires than any other world city. We have more million-earning bankers than the rest of Europe combined. FTSE 100 chief executives are being paid an average of £4.7m a year, almost £13,000 a day, and get 170 times as much as the average worker. And the richest five families in the country have as much wealth as the poorest 20% of the population.

Yet, since the start of the recession, average incomes have fallen by 10% after inflation is taken into account, the number of adults in poverty has risen to 8.7 million and the number of children in poverty has risen to 4.1 million. A third of households are living below the breadline and a million people are forced to use food banks every year. And, according to the OECD, our poorest fifth of households are among the most economically deprived in western Europe and have levels of deprivation which are more on a par with a number of eastern European countries. These attacks on working people and those unable to work must be resisted, and a mass turnout for the “Britain needs a pay rise” demonstration, which the TUC is organising in London on 18 October, is now more important than ever.
Richard Lynch
London

• I’m a retired Tory party activist but also a long-time reader of the Guardian, a paper that strives for accuracy and intelligently challenges my prejudices. So I’ve little time for Ed Miliband, but John Crace’s offensive and ill-directed mockery of his alleged pronunciation (Sketch, 24 September) leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Miliband speaks an ordinary and clearly pronounced educated English. Crace’s diatribe appears facing a headline “Playground insults from the right”. How apt.
Eugene Byrne
London

Rather than debating the peripheral issues of elite education such as what you should call a toilet (Too posh to push off, G2, 22 September) we should concentrate on the real issues such as the sexual, physical and emotional abuse perpetrated in private schools, in particular at boarding schools. Recently Alex Renton (Observer, 4 May) highlighted the fact that there are 130 private schools that have been or are now subject to allegations. In the public sector there would be an outcry. In the private sector the truth only comes to light gradually.

Stuart Jeffries is right in saying the posh will always be with us, degrading our lives, unless we abolish private schools. We should try to achieve this sooner rather than later by highlighting what is really degrading and abusive rather than wasting space on how toffs speak.
Val Harding
London

• It was crass and stupid of Stuart Jeffries to cite Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels alongside Made in Chelsea, and to dismiss them as commodities which “reduce us to voyeurs of a pimped-up grotesquerie of toffs behaving badly”. I realise that, like many of your contributors, Jeffries probably does not care about literature, only social justice; so to point out that the novels are wonderful would have little effect. Given the circumstances in which they were written, though, Jeffries’s comment shows the sort of moral fecklessness he likes to find in his class enemies. Might he not want to avoid that?
Benjamin Slingo
St John’s College, Cambridge

• Although I watch neither programme, others have told me that my 11-year-old granddaughter’s definition of posh was spot-on. After a few days at her new secondary school last year, she reported that her new classmates were much posher than those at her prior school. When I asked for an example, her response was: “These girls watch The Great British Bake Off, but in my old school they watched The X Factor.”
Joe Locker
Surbiton

• You write (Toff speak, G2, 22 September) that “hoi polloi” is Greek for “the plebs”. This is incorrect – it is Greek for “the many”.
Jennifer Coates
Emeritus professor of English language and linguistics, University of Roehampton

Late diagnosis may well be due to poor judgment by doctors and late presentation by patients themselves in some cases (Cancer is diagnosed late in almost half of patients, 22 September). However, in all too many parts of our inner cities, the problem is as likely to be getting to see a GP at all.

Our recent survey of GP capacity in Haringey showed shocking results. The borough is 116,000 GP appointments per year short of the NHS England requirement, most of this deficit being in disadvantaged Tottenham, with patients continuing to report extreme difficulty in obtaining an appointment, and GPs under great pressure.

Such obstacles to access to primary care can only exacerbate the inequalities in mortality and morbidity already apparent in the area, many of which are cancer-related.

Prompt access to quality primary care for all must be a first step in tackling these grim statistics on cancer survival rates. And when seeing such headlines, we should always ask which half are most likely to be diagnosed late and why.
Sharon Grant
Chair, Healthwatch Haringey

I read your article (23 August) regarding the gender imbalance in our theatres with a mounting sense of deja vu. In 1982 I was involved in an event called Women Live. Statistics that year showed that, of 350 plays in UK theatres, only 30 were by women and 25 of those were by, you guessed it, Agatha Christie. That year my play Watching Foxes was produced in the studio at the Bristol Old Vic. In 1987 my play Self Portrait was produced in the studio at Theatr Clwyd, and subsequently on the main stage at Derby Playhouse, then later at the Orange Tree Richmond, all directed by the great Annie Castledine. All played to packed houses. Nevertheless Variations, published in Methuen Plays by Women 9 in 1991, has had 10 student productions both in England and abroad, but has never been produced professionally.

My work consistently places women centre stage. My women are proactive: they are not tragic victims, dutiful wives, maids or whores. After 35 years working as a professional playwright, I am still writing. But most of my recent and planned work is now for radio. I am by no means a cynic. Indeed I would consider myself an idealist and an eternal optimist. I wish every success to the Advance Symposium, and passionately hope I may at last see positive change in my lifetime.
Sheila Yeger
Almondsbury, Gloucestershire

The problem with buskers in Bath is not just an abbey problem – amplified music is destroying the ambience of much of the city’s historic centre (Report, 24 September). During a walk earlier in the year we were driven out of the centre by the amplification of what we might well have stopped to listen to, had it not been so loud. Buskers have been around since Roman times, as of course has Bath. In 462BC the Law of the Twelve Tables made it a crime to sing about or make parodies of the government or its officials in public places and the penalty was death. Let’s hope Bath council can sort this matter out in a more civilised way.
Judith Hunt
Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight

• England 10, Montenegro nil. Aggregate score in qualifiying for the World Cup 52-1 (Scotland face play-off but England finish with 10-0 win, 18 September). If this were the men’s team, this remarkable result would be front-page news in the main paper. But it’s the women, so it’s tucked away in a single column in the middle of the Sport section. So much for the Guardian’s feminist credentials!
Margaret Jacobi
Birmingham

• Ofsted says it does not routinely collect comprehensive data on those flawed inspections and to provide it would be too expensive (Ofsted tight-lipped about ‘flawed’ inspections, 23 September). I wonder if they would accept this kind of excuse from a school?
Ann Burgess
Lincoln

• It has never been made so clear that the followers of Margaret Thatcher cannot distinguish between fact and fiction (In defence of Hilary Mantel and fiction, G2, 23 September).
Fred Cairns
Oldham

• Some weeks ago I used these pages to advance my thesis that dogs vote Labour, cats vote Conservative (Letters, 4 August).Bafflingly, there were some objections to this. On Tuesday we heard that the Queen purred down the line at Cameron (Report, 24 September). I rest my case.
Jonathan Myerson
London

Sir, I object to your use of the term “ritual” slaughter when writing about how religious communities dispatch animals for food (report, Sept 23) . There is no “ritual” involved in the act of shechita, the Jewish humane method of slaughtering animals, any more than in the conventional industrialised methods of slaughter.
Henry Grunwald, QC
Chairman of Shechita UK

Sir, Draining blood from an animal without stunning might have been necessary to prevent disease in the past, but modern farming and science highlight how this is unnecessary. I can’t imagine a Creator who would want any animal to suffer.
Justin Richards
Hitchin, Herts

Sir, You are suggesting the deployment of ground troops to drive out the terrorists from the zone of conflict in Iraq and Syria (“Action, At Last”, leading article, Sept 24). However, one must consider the repercussions which are likely to ensue if British Army boots are on Iraqi soil. The root of the problem goes back to the US-UK invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam from power without any structural plan towards postwar stabilisation. This resulted in an inept and weak government unable to bridge the chasm between sectarian factions.

As a direct consequence, we witnessed the emergence of indigenous terrorism in this country. It is counterfactual to argue but the present problem with Isis could have been averted if the US had taken direct action when President Assad’s armed forces were committing genocide of their own people.

Instead of direct military intervention, the West should assist and encourage the Arab nations to take concerted military action against Isis for the sake of their own security.
Sam Banik
London N10

Sir, On April 27, 1916, Gertrude Bell — the great British Arabist still held in affection by many Arabs — summed up the chaotic results of contemporary British Middle Eastern policy thus: “Muddle through! Why yes so we do — wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed.” Very little has changed in 100 years. When the vote is taken in Westminster, I hope and pray that our MPs will not “muddle through” into the lobbies, but will consider the alternative of not making war, not joining in and continuing to seek for reconciliation — which is after all our only enduring objective.
Mark Dunn
Wildham Stoughton, W Sussex

Sir, Is it not droll that Tony Blair, the Middle Eastern peace envoy, having made no positive contribution to anything, now wants British troops on the ground in Iraq again? What a crazy state of affairs. Will he send his children?
Frank Elliott
Johnston, Pembrokeshire

Sir, Rather than protecting British citizens abroad from jihadists, the MoD plans (“Britain may deploy armed drones to Iraq”, Sept 24) will undoubtedly have the opposite effect, as well as increasing the threat of terrorism here in the UK. Kurt Volker, former US permanent representative to Nato, argues that drone strikes “allow our opponents to cast us as a distant, high-tech, amoral purveyor of death”.
Chris Cole
Drone Wars UK, Oxford

Sir, I have some reservations about Israel’s policy towards Gaza. But, given that the so-called Islamic State has not (yet) attacked the UK, our government’s willingness to join in bombing raids in Syria and Iraq does illustrate its two-faced attitude in respect of its criticism of Israel’s defence against rockets from Hamas terrorists.
Ivor Davies
London N12

Sir, Mr Cameron may like to consider that Isis is more of a threat to the UK from its presence within the UK than its presence in Syria and Iraq. However, this reality might not appeal to his hubris.
Brian Edmonds
Farnham, Surrey

Sir, You report (“Real tweet might be vital clue”, Sept 24) that analysts are using background sounds from an Isis video to work out where it might have been filmed. Have we
forgotten the lessons of the Second World War on the importance of secrecy?
Thomas Morris
London N1

Sir, We would be better off attacking those Arab countries that supply Isis with arms. Then we should go after those countries stupidly supplying these Arab countries passing weaponry to Isis, namely Britain and the US. I believe this is known as reductio ad absurdum.
David Lee
Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey

Sir, I write regarding your leader on Anglo/German cultural traditions (“Grand Alliance”, Sept 23). Germany has been a colossus as a purveyor of classical music. As a member of the London Symphony Chorus, I joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Proms. We were placed so as to have a member of the German chorus on each side as we sang the words of brotherhood and hope for the future.

Yes, it is time to repay the compliment to German culture.
Ian Fletcher
London EC2

Sir, The Germans have to be given credit for creating the Beatles’ look, and for giving Kraftwerk to the world. I am, however, struggling to forgive them for 99 Red Balloons.
Neale James Potts
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

Sir, We have lived in our London “mansion” (a modest suburban terraced house) for 35 years and we are a Labour tax target simply because of house price inflation (“Labour will levy £2m mansion tax to fund NHS”, Sept 23). What may drive us out of the family home is cheap Labour politics of envy. Our alternative could involve buying half a dozen small buy-to-lets outside the southeast. So, an expensive, larger but less socially valid house comes on to the market and six houses needed for first-time buyers are taken off it. How can this be good policy?
Andrew Botterill
London NW11

Sir, The alternative to a mansion tax is to increase the number of council tax bands, which would be much less emotive. Where I live, the top band starts with houses of £1.2 million yet owners of genuine mansions valued at up to £10 million pay the same as those in £1.2 million houses. Changing tax bands would be regarded as fairer than both the existing system or an abitrary new mansion tax.
Peter Butlin
Weybridge, Surrey

Sir, As a lower-rate income tax payer and an octogenarian house-owner, I am concerned as to how I shall pay the mansion tax on our house, which we bought 40 years ago for £70,500.
Susan Morgan
London W6

Sir, “Gordon Brown raised national insurance by 1 per cent in 2002” (front page report, Sept 23). He raised it from 10 per cent to 11 per cent. That was a 10 per cent increase and nobody noticed; very clever.
Rodney Preece
East Meon, Hants

Sir, Political short-termism used to be an acceptable expedient but in the hands of people whose only horizon is the next day’s headlines it is plain, destructive stupidity.
Richard Bellman
Sutton Scotney, Hants

Sir, Mansion tax? The more urgent policy is to build more homes.
Stuart Law
CEO, Assetz, Stockport, Cheshire​

Sir, I write regarding your leader on Anglo/German cultural traditions (“Grand Alliance”, Sept 23). Germany has been a colossus as a purveyor of classical music. As a member of the London Symphony Chorus, I joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Proms. We were placed so as to have a member of the German chorus on each side as we sang the words of brotherhood and hope for the future.

Yes, it is time to repay the compliment to German culture.
Ian Fletcher
London EC2

Sir, The Germans have to be given credit for creating the Beatles’ look, and for giving Kraftwerk to the world. I am, however, struggling to forgive them for 99 Red Balloons.
Neale James Potts
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs