Letter: 101 uses for a palace

Sir: The recent suggestion that the Queen should vacate Buckingham Palace, to enable the building to be put to another use, is not new.

In the mid-1860s the National Gallery was bitterly criticised - The Builder, for instance, called it 'the ugliest and most ill-constructed picture gallery in Europe' - and one suggested solution was that the present Queen's great-great-grandmother should move from Buckingham Palace to Kensington Palace, and that the National Gallery's collection should fill the vacancy.

In words attributed to King Solomon, 'There is nothing new, but what has once been old.'

Yours faithfully,

HALINA GRAHAM

Curator

The Cecil Higgins

Art Gallery

Bedford