Letter: Australia's choice

Sir: Apart from his absurd claim that "it is, and has been for centuries, of incalculable benefit to the English to have a comic-opera family playing out its dramas talismanically", Howard Jacobson fails to demonstrate why any nation needs our monarchy, never mind Australia.

He also fails to explain why Kylie Minogue would be any more "comic opera" or less "talismanic" than the Windsors, or to recognise that neither population would have to suffer the presidency of her descendants. And he regurgitates the worn-out nostrum that a head of state has to symbolise a modern nation's "sense of self" - even supposing such a construct means anything to anybody.

The United States seems to survive its repeated dismay at successive White House occupants with its self-confidence entirely unimpaired - and the British nations, like Australia, should be grown-up enough to do the same.

If Mr Jacobson really believes there are only "a few mad monarchists" in the UK, he has been spending too much time down under.

TONY WALTON

Knighton, Powys