As Donald Trump is now talking of a fence in some places rather than a wall (Report, 14 November), perhaps he might also consider a hedge. In 1869 a hedge stretched across the whole of India – a distance of 2,300 miles. The Great Hedge was a customs barrier put up by the British to levy a duty on salt – cutting off an affordable supply of an absolute necessity of life.
Jane Edwards
Sheffield
• Are Trump’s appointees the illiberal elite (Backlash over Trump role for far-right aide, 15 November)?
Allan Jones
Yardley Gobion, Northamptonshire
• Your correspondent (Letters, 16 November) should buy a computer and learn to use Google. Here he will learn that “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene in 1976, and trope first appeared in 1533, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Yours (not down with the kids at 77),
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
• A meme is a small piece of information, propagating many copies of itself. Imagine pronouncing it “me! me!”
Adrian Smith
Leeds
• As England has nothing in the way of national dress, I suggest all visiting delegates to these isles could be issued with morris dancing attire (Letters, 12 November). Health and safety might insist the poles were modified so that eyes could not be poked out in the course of debate.
Amanda Tempest-Radford
Norwich
• Sean Ingle (Popovich sets example but British sport stars stay silent, Sport, 14 November) omits the outstanding example of Brian Clough’s very public commitment to the Anti-Nazi League.
Simon Maddison
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
• Robert Vaughn’s supreme moment (Obituary, 14 November) was catching a fly in his hand in The Magnificent Seven.
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge
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