I was interested to hear, on Radio 4's PM broadcast this evening, of the proposal to set up an English Academy. The aim of this body would be to preserve and protect the English language, along the same lines as the Academie Francaise.


As a pedant who cringes at the inappropriate use of the apostrophe and who cannot bear to use text language, I would support such an institution. My dad. who studied English at Glasgow, instilled in me the love of well written English, which has never left me and which, I am happy to report, I appear to have passed on to my elder daughter.


One of the guests on the programme was from the Queen's English Society whose aims are 'to improve standards of English, to encourage people to know more about our wonderful language, to use it more effectively and to enjoy it more'. Hear hear!