Unappealing visitor

The Oxbridge Visitor system is even more iniquitous than your article indicates ("Visitor is unwelcome in law", THES, September 3). In 1988, as a Cambridge PhD student, I appealed to the visitor, the Duke of Edinburgh, against an otherwise unappealable decision of the Board of Graduate Studies. All I received was a letter from a Palace official informing me that HRH felt it inappropriate to intervene in the internal affairs of the university.

Peter Butler

Switzerland