OBITUARY:Margaret Read

Your sympathetic obituary of Margaret Read by Leonie Cohn [21 March] put me in mind of my first day as a young assistant at York Art Gallery in the austere days of January 1953, writes John Jacob.

I was introduced to the volatile Lady Read (as she had just become). "Welcome to York," she said. "You mustn't think we're provincial, Constantine was crowned here." And then in the same breath, "You must be wondering why Herbert accepted the knighthood [announced that morning]? It would have been like giving up the sweet ration!"

I have never since felt so much at the centre of the ancient and modern world.