Letter: Yes, Mr Portillo, we're cynical - but only about politicians

MAY I appeal to Michael Portillo ('Poison of a new British Disease', 16 January) to give us the names of those dangerous 'academics, churchmen, authors, commentators and journalists' within 'the British elite' who are spreading this 'self-destructive sickness of national cynicism'?

Otherwise Mr Portillo's speech will itself sound like a chattering attempt to denigrate our great institutions and achievements: that is, our universities, the church, our literature, and the gaining of democratic free speech.

Michael Holroyd

London W10