We made conscientious enquiries of various high-profile organisations offering just the answer and by and large it seemed to be a good idea

We made conscientious enquiries of various high-profile organisations offering just the answer; and by and large it seemed to be a good idea. In the end our newly formed Parish Council took matters into its own hands when this astonishing woman, then aged 76, became the first recipient of the Myland Order of Merit.I hope other communities have found similar ways to recognise outstanding service which is ignored by the authorities.PATRICK MILLS Myland, Colchester, Essex Small print Sir: Your article last Saturday (27 December) on insurance for long-term care suggested that those in need are not addressing the problem and doing nothing about it.About seven years ago, in our healthy early sixties, we did do something. The system fails in other ways.For some years our community sought an award for a woman who had worked for our elderly, entirely unpaid, for 25 years, averaging between three and four days per week Her outstanding contribution went unrecognised. Hari seeks a national glue: how about the Queen’s conscientiousness? Or the notable elasticity of modern British society? British nationalism is not “inherently right-wing”.Are republics – France, the United States, Switzerland, Ireland and the rest – so obviously better or less venal? News to me.BERNARD McGINLEY Hastings, East SussexSir: I refer to your well-aimed observations about the discredited honours system (leading article, 31 December).

British troops in Basra, for example, are soldiers for the Crown, not Tony Blair: it is a useful distinction.The honours system no longer honours the hereditary principle, and recipients are not deemed to be supporters of the Government, or even of the monarchy. I’m not sure how angry an actor can be – barring Russell Crowe on a night out. The Angry Young Men of the 1950s were playwrights such as Arnold Wesker and, most notably, John Osborne, who rather muddied the waters by becoming a grumpy old man before he even got old.It was Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger that expressed disillusion with post-war England, with its anti-hero Jimmy Porter declaring: “There aren’t any good brave causes left.” Its dingy bedsit setting with ironing board on stage gave rise to the phrase “kitchen sink drama”; the critic Ken Tynan described the piece as “the best young play of its decade”, and the rest is theatrical history.Alan Bates appeared in Look Back in Anger, though not as angry young Jimmy Porter, but as his appeasing and benevolent pal Cliff. Bates was also a member of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, which staged the play and which, along with Joan Littlewood’s company at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, was challenging theatrical conventions.But I can’t see that working for the English Stage Company or acting in Look Back in Anger made Alan Bates an angry young man, any more than the label should be applied to the late Harry H Corbett, who was a member of Joan Littlewood’ s company before going on to become Harold Steptoe. Peggy Ashcroft was a member of the English Stage Company, but was neither young, male nor angry. The anger, such as it was, belonged to the writers.They strove for anger Alan Bates has had anger thrust upon him. It was used repeatedly in newspaper and television stories about the death of the actor Alan Bates.

I don’t think there was a single story on TV or in the press about him that didn’t describe him as one of the original angry young men. This does not actually mean that 15 or so writers and broadcasters were all struck with the same thought. The Press Association news agency tends to issue the first report on celebrity deaths, and the phrases it uses are picked up by all the various media outlets.And so Alan Bates was remembered as a former angry young man That came as news to me. Who knows, perhaps one day television’s Grumpy Old Men will replace it in the cultural vocabulary. But for nigh on 50 years the angry young men who brought a gritty realism to theatre in the mid to late 1950s have personified an era in British arts and become part of the language.
But this week the phrase took me by surprise. Why, you could travel the European seaboard for years eating at Langan’s Brasseries, remaining placeless, timeless and stateless. The P&O Langan’s is a responsibility-free zone of franchised forgetfulness.

I like to think of Peter Langan himself going back and forth across the Styx for an eternity, every millennium or so telling Charon to fuck off
More from Will Self. Of all those phrases that sum up a movement in the arts, the one with real staying power is “angry young men”. “We’d be sacked as soon as the ship had docked,” one of them ventures, “if we were rude to the customers.”"How many of these little Langan’s are there then?” I enquire idly.”Ten. Nine on the cross-Channel ferries, and they’ve just opened one on the Bilbao route.”"How long does that take then?”"Thirty-six hours.”The Tannoy sounds, calling us back to the car deck – we’re about to land.