Obituary: Professor S. Herbert Frankel

Your interesting obituary of Professor S. Herbert Frankel [by Professor Jonathan Frankel, 30 December] omits one aspect of his work at Oxford which I was fortunate enough to benefit from, writes R.C. Overton. I refer to his lectures in Rhodes House in the late 1940s to cadets on the Colonial Service ("First Devonshire") Course who were destined to take up administrative posts in the various colonies.

Professor Frankel was a popular lecturer with his agreeably relaxed style and his refreshingly sceptical and down-to-earth approach. I remember on one occasion when one of our number had suggested some possibly over- ambitious scheme for improving agriculture in a very primitive African village he gently pointed out that the procurement of a wheelbarrow might be the more productive way forward.