Alec Issigonis | Morris Minors | Eid al-Fitr recipes | Mary Wilson
Hostile as I am to today’s “hostile environment”, I’m not so sure that Morris Minor designer Alec Issigonis (Letters, 11 June) would necessarily have fallen foul of it. His father, though Greek, was a British citizen, and the family could reasonably claim asylum on the arrival of him and his mother, Hulda, in England. The family fled burning Smyrna (Izmir) as refugees in 1922, landing first in Malta where Alec’s father died. As Alec himself wrote: “The Turkish army was very close and the British navy came to evacuate the small colony of British people…” The story of those refugees is told in Malta: Women, History, Books and Places.
Susanna Hoe
Oxford
• Morris Minor drivers still acknowledge each other, as do drivers of other classic cars (Letters, 9 June), and the cars attract lots of other attention: people will hoot and wave from their modern cars, small children love them, and adults will reminisce unprompted about their father’s, uncle’s or grandfather’s Minor. If you think social interaction is dead, try driving a Morris Minor!
Janet Fraser
London