Sir – Further to Mr Shellard’s letter (Vandalise fabric of city, January 28), there is really little that is new under the spotlight which regularly shines on Oxford University:

“I talked of the recent expulsion of six students from the University of Oxford . . . ”

“Sir, that expulsion was extremely just and proper. What have they to do at a University, who are not willing to be taught, but will presume to teach? . . . Sir, they were examined, and found to be mighty ignorant fellows.”

“But, was it not hard, Sir, to expel them, for I am told they were good beings?”

“I believe they might be good beings; but they were not fit to be in the University of Oxford . . . ”

Could it be that Samuel Johnson (Pembroke College, 1728-29) might today have thoughts about those who seek to remove traces of Cecil Rhodes comparable to those which, in his own day, he expressed to James Boswell . . . about Methodists?

R.E.M. Lawson
Oxford