• IT was disappointing to find the CNJ giving so much space to Graham Smith (In time we’ll be rid of the monarchy, September 15), when several million of Britain’s people have turned out to assemble and queue in affection and respect to the country’s longest-serving monarch.

While most of the media indulged in tiresome overdrive and much of the pageantry, grief and flag-waving is, very effectively, stage managed, it doesn’t hide the reality that huge numbers of us are attached to a constitutional monarchy, epitomised by Elizabeth II.

Accession is not some newly cobbled together device: it’s been clear cut since Victoria’s demise, avoiding the bloody shenanigans, king-making and palace coups with which our history is littered.

I am no dedicated monarchist but it’s a question of the alternative. Do we really wish the head of state to be a failed lame-brain politician, shoe-horned into high office on the back of vote-buying and coercion, a Trump, a Johnson, a Blair?

There are successful and stable republics; there are also repressive and evil ones, working off revenge against their opponents, creating perpetual instability. “Baby and bath water”, “Better the devil you know” come to mind.

ALAN WHEELER, NW5