Letter: Luvvies, sillies and Labour

Sir: Is it not time to acknowledge that the "luvvies" joke ("Ken Follett resigns as Labour's luvvie-in-chief", 12 April) has had its day? I have not examined the etymology of "luvvie" but assume it to have sprung from the now widespread philistinism that regards artistic creation as sectarian and any demonstration of candour, sensitivity, enthusiasm or goodwill as an affectation to be mocked. Those involved in theatre and cinema are particularly sneered at; the more so, if they also harbour notions that society can be improved other than by destruction.

One recalls that Cambridge caste dubbed "sillies" - described by Leonard Woolf as "an intellectual aristocracy of the middle class, the nearest equivalent in other countries being the French 18th century noblesse de robe". His wife, Virginia, was a "silly"; as was G. E. Moore, author of Principia Ethica and one of the four great philosophers to come down from Cambridge at the time. Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster were "sillies". The word seems to have applied to those who thought themselves capable of building a new society, free, rational, civilised and in pursuit of truth and beauty. The First World War put an end to such "silliness" and the cliquish meaning of the word disappeared.

I'm sure a moratorium on "luvvy" would hold renewed bellicosity (in myself, at least) at bay.

Yours sincerely,

CAL MCCRYSTAL

London, N20