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Boxing clever
I read your piece on left-handedness in history by Dr Deborah Thorpe (March 2022) with interest. I write about boxing, and ‘southpaws’ [boxers who stand with their right foot in the front and left foot in the back] had a very bad time in boxing for many years.
Probably less than 10 per cent of boxers were left-handed, and fighters did not like facing someone who boxed with a different style, so they avoided them. That meant there was little need for left-handed sparring partners, which in turn led to there being fewer boxers who wanted to box left-handed since they had fewer chances of getting a fight. One world champion, after struggling to look good against a southpaw, suggested that southpaws should be drowned at birth. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that attitudes began to change, with much of the impetus coming from a younger generation who were more receptive to change.
While they are still in the minority, many of the best fighters in the world are southpaws, including Scotland’s world champion, Josh Taylor, as well as Terence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk and Filipino Manny Pacquiao – the biggest sports star in his country’s history.
There might be a 70/30 ratio of orthodox [boxers who stand with their left foot in the front and right foot in the back] to southpaw, but there is no longer any stigma in boxing associated with being left-handed.
Eric Armit, by email
Missed opportunity?
In your Christmas 2021 issue, you included a very interesting ‘In a Nutshell’ piece on the US Emancipation Proclamation.
However, in addressing ‘What attempts had been made to ban slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation?’ you failed to note a significant effort by Abraham Lincoln in late November 1861, when he proposed a plan for gradual emancipation state by state, financed with US bonds that would pay out in 31 annual instalments.
Lincoln tested this idea in the small border slave state of Delaware. The smart political idea was that if the idea worked in tiny Delaware, it might spread to the other border states, and might even become attractive to some states in the Deep South. Unfortunately, this creative idea of Lincoln’s failed in the Delaware House of Representatives in February 1862, more than six months before the Emancipation Proclamation.
T Downey, Maryland, US
Alternative history
As an avid reader of your magazine for several years, I particularly like the ‘What if…’ column. I have recently started watching The Crown on Netflix and I have come up with my own ‘What if…’
According to one story – whether it is true or false doesn’t really matter – Princess Elizabeth didn’t want to be the heir to the throne, but her younger sister Princess Margaret would have loved it.
What if Princess Margaret had been able to become the heir and, later, queen? Would the public have put up with her flamboyant ways? Would the monarchy have become irrelevant? How might she have treated her prime ministers and serious matters of state?
Obviously, Peter Townsend [her romantic partner during the early 1950s] wouldn’t have got close to her. Her eventual husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, would have carried on being a ‘lounge lizard’. She may have been married off to a European prince – even Prince Philip, if Princess Elizabeth hadn’t managed to marry him before Princess Margaret became available.
One imagines Margaret would have still lived her life to the full, not worrying about what people thought, and the Palace would have been in a state of constant turmoil. Princess Elizabeth may have been happier being a naval wife if she had still managed to marry Philip. And he might have been happier being the man of the house rather than the Queen’s consort. Thankfully it didn’t happen, and I for one am glad we have had Queen Elizabeth II as our monarch for the past 70 years.