Drag hunting an ideal alternative to bloody pursuit

YOUR festive picture of a St Stephen’s Day fox hunt calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s reference to this bloodsport as the “unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”.

Not that I feel altogether comfortable with this description, bearing in mind that the writer was not alluding to the cruel nature of the pastime but rather to his distaste for a particular social milieu or set of attitudes that he found distasteful.

I see nothing wrong with any aspect of what is captured in your paper’s photograph of a hunt as I have no objection to people riding horses, or galloping across country behind packs of hounds, or indeed to the colourful pageantry of the hunt itself.