The Sage of Sussex’s latest exercise in belittlement, this time of Winston Churchill (January 7), claims the former prime minister and wartime leader, pictured, would not last long as a politician today.

But few 20th-century prime ministers or public figures would. In our shallow celebrity-obsessed culture, where every smallest twitch, tweet, tic or trick is immediately seized on, analysed, replayed and ridiculed, figures of any real stature are unlikely to emerge or survive. The literary critic George Steiner has called ours the Age of Embarrassment, its watchword being ‘Come off it!’ In such an age, he said: “It is doubtful whether Beethoven could have produced his Ninth Symphony or Michelangelo the Sistine Chapel ceiling” – or this country could have managed to win a World War.

Conversely, I suspect few of our current characterless leaders would last very long if transported back to 1940.

Graham Chainey The Albemarle Marine Parade Brighton