Sir - At midday last Sunday, a small parade gathered at the war memorial in St Giles to remember 'the Few', the RAF pilots who successfully defended Britain from the German air assault in 1940.

Had they not been successful, and it was a close-run thing, the consequences for the country would have been catastrophic with German air superiority.

At the ceremony were a few aged veterans, the air training corps and a bugler. However the bugle calls could hardly be heard and the minute silence was a mockery, surrounded as it was by four lanes of thundering traffic.

Would it have been such a major undertaking to close St Giles for the few minutes it took to hold the ceremony.

It's a sad way to treat those who fought and died for their country as no more than an inconvenience whose memory cannot be allowed to interfere with the traffic.

Angela Watson, Oxford