Letter: New mandarins in old footsteps

Sir: Apropos of Sarah Hegarty's piece on the Civil Service (22 October), recruiters of new graduates can find talent in all our institutions of higher education. But it is not uniformly distributed.

Partly for reasons of snobbery and keeping up with the Normans, the English persist in thinking of Oxbridge as the best. Therefore a disproportionate number of the brightest young men and women go there. And therefore, perhaps, it is the best. It is a self-stoking

system.

Unless, and until, there is a change in the popular view of where to get the best education, the time to worry about the higher ranks of the Civil Service will come when the Oxbridge element is seriously diminished.

Yours sincerely,

FERGUS ALLEN

Streatley, Berkshire

23 October