Further to Francesca Simon’s excellent rebuttal of Kemi Badenoch’s promise to scrap “rip‑off” degrees (Kemi Badenoch wants to end ‘rip-off degrees’ – but I wouldn’t have created Horrid Henry without mine, 15 October), I’d like to point out that studying Old and Middle English brings vital contextual understanding of modern British life, from the crusader origins of trust law to the complex politics of regional devolution today.
My own degrees in the subject also taught me transferable professional skills including transcribing near-illegible handwriting, the considerable importance of version control in work documentation, and the ability to read between the lines when dissent must be expressed obliquely because doing otherwise carries a high penalty. Perhaps this last is what makes the humanities so threatening in certain quarters.
Leon Craig
Berlin, Germany
