Letter: Prole music invades the BR platform

Sir: Piped music at railway stations adds torment to annoyance when one has to wait for a late train. And who pays for it? Does BR pay performing rights? How can it spend on such inanities when it is strapped for cash?

Background music is one of the symptoms of the current 'proletarianisation of taste' that the historian Arnold Toynbee saw as one of the signs of the imminent break- up of a civilisation. Writing 50 or so years ago, he said that he saw no sign of it as yet in Britain.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN MORLEY

Limpley Stoke,

Wiltshire

15 November