WHILST in full agreement with Iain A D Mann’s thoughts concerning the First World War and its bloodshed, I was otherwise somewhat bemused to read his slightly cynical missive (Letters, April 15).

Mr Mann is, of course, entitled to his opinion on the British Royal Family: he cites public expense – not to mention behaviour, and the suggestion of less savoury activities. And so it goes.

As he indicates, the change came in 1917: George V was responsible. The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha name had been introduced to this country in 1840, on the marriage of Prince Albert to the fairly new queen, Victoria; she was, herself, the last monarch of the House of Hanover. Edward V11 succeeded, in January, 1901, as our first Saxe-Coburg sovereign.

Prince Philip, interestingly of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg stock, is a great-grandson of Alice of Hesse, a daughter of Victoria and Albert; and of her husband Louis. And their daughter Victoria, it was, who married a Battenberg, becoming, in 1917, a Mountbatten.

Victoria and Albert did, indeed, produce a very complicated family.

Finally, Royal Mail marked the House of Windsor occasion on February 15 – so someone else has remembered, too.

Brian D Henderson,

44 Dundrennan Rooad, Battlefield, Glasgow.