From time to time, one hears of elders lamenting the lack of manners and acceptable behaviour from their children – as if this were a new thing.

Take heart, however.

The following is a letter, recorded in Wiliam Hickey’s diary for January 1808, when he was on the point of leaving Calcutta: “I don’t know how you may find it, but to me the manners of young people of both sexes is now most unpleasantly and provokingly self-sufficient, no respect for parents, nor for age, and to hear their language one would be led to suppose them exclusively possessed of all the knowledge and talents which you I have but just attained.”

There’s nothing new under the sun.

DAVID BARNARD Cherwell Avenue Kidlington