LETTER OF THE MONTH
Car-Toon celebration
I enjoyed John Wills’ feature on the history of Disney (December), and it made me wonder if anyone else remembers a marketing idea used by Disney in the 1930s.
My late mother was born on 28 September 1928. When she was eight or nine years old, she received a very special birthday present: a birthday cake from Mickey Mouse [who had been created that same year]. A friend of my grandmother had read an article in a woman’s magazine about the fact that children born between certain dates in 1928 could apply for a birthday cake from Walt Disney Studios. Both had children who qualified, and cakes duly arrived from the cartoon character.
As a child living in Newcastle in the 1930s, it was a magical surprise my mother never forgot. Even as an old lady, when asked her age she would always reply that she was the same age as Mickey Mouse.
Helen Cairns,
Tyne & Wear
We reward this issue’s Letter of the Month writer with a copy of David Kynaston’s A Northern Wind: Britain 1962–65, one of the titles included in our Books of the Year feature. You can read the full list on page 64
Parallel lines
The medieval engagement that bears closest comparison to the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43 isn’t so much Calais, as Dan Jones suggests (Medieval Stalingrad, November), but the siege of Orléans by the English in 1428–29. Just as Stalingrad represented the furthest German advance into Russia, Orléans represented the same for the English. Just as Stalingrad sat on the bend of a great river – the Volga – so too did Orléans (the Loire). Just as Stalingrad opened the way to the mighty lands beyond the river for the Germans, so too did Orléans offer the same for the English.
Stalingrad was the decisive turning point in German fortunes in the Second World War, as was Orléans for the English in the Hundred Years’ War. And, just as defeat at Stalingrad spelled ultimate defeat in the war for the Germans, defeat at Orléans spelled the same for the English in France.
Professor Nigel Saul, Egham
Neglected knights
