Readers respond to Francis Beckett’s article on the great American singer-songwriter who gave up celebrity to teach maths
Francis Beckett doubts whether the Jesuits at his boarding school “ever realised the subversive nature of what we were listening to” (‘My songs spread like herpes’: why did satirical genius Tom Lehrer swap worldwide fame for obscurity?, 22 May). It may surprise him to know that I was first introduced to the incomparable Tom Lehrer by my Roman Catholic parish priest, in north London, who found The Irish Ballad a perfect comment on hypocrisy, in about 1959 or 60, and gleefully brought a copy of the LP round to my parents’ house. It was listened to avidly, among much hilarity. It’s possible, and even probable, that the scholarly Jesuits had as good a sense of the ridiculous as the Benedictines who ran the parish I grew up in.
Kate Enright
Weymouth, Dorset
• Francis Beckett’s article on Tom Lehrer made me laugh and took me whizzing back in time. In the late 1950s, our big brother, Sandy Craig, started at Glasgow University. He discovered Tom Lehrer there and brought him home to us in the shape of two second-hand 10-inch vinyls, which I still have. Our railwayman father laughed his head off at the songs. My sister Pat and I developed a party piece singing one of them with some of the more gruesome lyrics, I Hold Your Hand in Mine. I can still sing it today, ending with: “I’m sorry now I killed you / For our love was something fine / Until they come to get me / I shall hold your hand in mine.”
Maggie Craig
Ruthven, Aberdeenshire
