Sir, - Angela Long's review of The Queen and Di (Books, August 19th) contains a bizarre and disturbing sentence. Ms Long writes of Princess Diana: "In a way she was the worst sort of female role model in history, there because she looked well and she was maternal."
Is one to understand that a maternal image, or to be maternal, is part of the worst kind of female role model?
This was the same weekend when it was reported that a young girl in Dun Laoghaire took it upon herself to thrust a broken bottle in the face of a young German visitor. The general connection between this kind of violence and the lack of a maternal (and paternal) role model seems so obvious and so well established that one might wish to see more maternal role models in public and private life, rather than fewer. - Yours, etc.,
Gordon T. Ledbetter, Highfield Road, Rathgar, Dublin 6.