Sir, Ben Macintyre suggests that dictators do not mind if people know about their liking for lavish vulgarity, but wish to conceal their petty ordinariness (Opinion, Mar 20).
Yet Hitler was portrayed in a propaganda film romping with his dog in a pleasant but far from grand house, and a song proclaimed that his favourite flower was the simple edelweiss. Any blingfulness was kept firmly out of the public gaze (that was Goering’s line), as indeed it was for Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Or is there a difference between today’s mediocrities and the Premier League dictators of the past?
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Oxford