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Adrian Mourby tells us ("Never trust a talking mouse", THES , November 30) that Walt Disney's children's stories point to shortcomings in Americans. They are, he says, subject to a "national naivete" and "their tendency is towards stasis and indifference". One wonders if he knows any Americans?

These traits go back, according to a lecturer he quotes, to the Puritans who founded "the idealised community that was to be built in Virginia". The Puritans went to New England. Virginia was founded by Anglicans. Why are we expected to take such inaccuracies seriously?

Mark F. Proudman
New College, Oxford