Madam, - Having watched on TV the wave of shoppers engulfing the newly opened Dundrum Town Centre, I was reminded of Napoleon's dismissive description of England as a nation of shopkeepers.
Perhaps if he were around today, and had read the names over shops in Irish shopping centres, he might have similarly characterised present-day Ireland as a nation of shopkeepers - English shopkeepers. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID GRANT, Mount Pleasant, Waterford.
Madam, - Hurray for Rosita Boland's report on Dundrum's new consumerist cathedral (Weekend, March 5). It made me think of my frugal grandparents' graves in the small cemetery in that village from which spinning sounds must now be emerging.
I once visited the largest mall in the world - in Edmonton, Alberta. It features a swimming pool and skating rink and people go there for winter holidays, sleeping in their camper vans in the car parks. The mall contains 800 retail outlets but when I enquired after a stationery shop where I might buy a sketch pad I was told none existed. This is the future and don't argue with it.
To try to understand the impetus behind this gadarene phenomenon I am rereading The Gulag Archipelago. In it Solzhenitsyn refers to "Progressive doctrine, the granite ideology" and elaborates: "If we doggedly seek out the essence of our morality, we are told it will darken our material progress".
I think I know what he means. - Yours, etc.,
BOB QUINN, Béal an Daingin, Conamara.