The Red Shoes is not about “a ballerina forced to choose between ambition and love” (Report, 6 April). It’s about a ballerina forced to choose between being the protege of a controlling ballet impresario who considers marriage a betrayal of art, and her own artistic and personal freedom. She doesn’t cease to dance when she marries, though she is forced to give up the stardom bestowed on her by Lermontov. Her downfall comes when she gives up her independence to return to the source of her early fame.
Catherine Rose
Olney, Buckinghamshire
• Karl Sabbagh (Letters, 11 April) may be right to correct Giles Fraser’s account of the Sykes-Picot agreement, but in asserting that Palestine did not gain its independence he ignores the fact that Egypt and Jordan occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1947 when these areas should have formed such a state.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• Why do “celebrities” bother with social media (Historian Lucy Worsley: I learned to hit back at ‘disturbing’ trolls, 11 April)? If you don’t use it, you won’t get the disturbing insults. Simple as that.
Catherine Roome
Staplehurst, Kent
• Was Garry Trudeau being a little naughty in the Doonesbury retrospective cartoon strip about Clint Eastwood in G2 on 8 April? Take a look at the poster saying “CLINT” and the positioning of the microphone cables in front of it.
Philip Irwin
Porthcawl, South Wales
• Yesterday I was on a train to London Bridge which stopped abruptly outside New Cross Gate. The driver announced that there would be a short delay due to “scheduled loitering”. Clearly too late in the year for the wrong sort of snow and too early for leaves on the line.
Len Blomstrand
London
• Sunday: all is covered with snow here in the Three Peaks, in the Yorkshire Dales, and a swallow has just flown out of our woodshed.
Hilary Fenten
Selside, North Yorkshire
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