Sir – So, the silly season is with us. Some students are campaigning for statues of Cecil Rhodes to be removed from Oxford buildings because he did not live up to modern standards of morality.

Are they then campaigning for the demolition of Rhodes House and the abolition of the Rhodes Scholarship scheme which has enabled so many overseas students to study at Oxford? These too were funded by Cecil Rhodes.

As an undergraduate of Jesus College some 45 years ago, I was partly funded by an Exhibition set up by T E Lawrence (of Arabia) but felt no particular qualms about the more enterprising episodes in his career.

But then we were the revolutionary generation who thought we would change the world by electing a goldfish as President of our Junior Common Room as a demonstration of our contempt for bourgeois power structures (or something like that).

The Principal, Sir John Habakkuk, took the election of Mr A Goldfish at its face value, noting that the JCR President attended meetings but took little part in discussions and remained a floating voter. We realised we had been neatly and good-naturedly outwitted.

May I suggest, then, that the next campaign to which these students should turn their attention should be centred upon Lord Nuffield, whose cars, while excellent in their day, would not pass modern crash testing examinations?

So would they press for the closure of Nuffield College and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and all the other humanitarian institutions which Lord Nuffield endowed and supported?

Martin Roberts
Botley