Political perk

As one who voted in the infamous “40 per cent rule” referendum of 1979, I remember very well the part which the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper played on the No side.

Peter Smaill (Letters, 19 June) may well be right in claiming that Trevor-Roper received “a great deal of intemperate personal abuse”.

He was, however, rewarded with a life peerage by Margaret Thatcher – a political perk 
which is hardly compatible with democracy or objective scholarship.

John Coutts

Ladysneuk Road

Stirling