I really shouldn’t be revealing this to you, Brian Simpson (Letters, 25 October), but we have a valley just brimming over with pubs that store and serve beer and ale perfectly. The multi-award-winning Old Cock in Otley has to be top of anyone’s must-visit list. Real ales, real ciders, real people, real conversations, and now and again real music.
Angus MacIntosh
Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire
• The quote attributed to Rocky (Turkey investigates Galatasaray fans over ‘Gülenist’ Rocky poster, 25 October) does, in fact, belong to the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins: “The great only appear great because we are on our knees; let us rise.” It can be seen in O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Seán O’Conghaile
London
• Probably the best and certainly the funniest example of a graveyard voice (Letters, 23 and 25 October) is the narrator of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, who you eventually realise has been dead throughout the course of that extraordinary novel.
Jem Whiteley
Oxford
• Reading Paul Evans’ Country Diary contributions is always a joy – bliss even. After his piece (25 October) you tell me that Paul is reading the first of four Tweets of the Day on Sunday at 5.58am on BBC Radio 4. Do I dare listening to the voice behind the words? Ignorance, sometimes, is also bliss.
Tim Davies
Batheaston, Somerset
• I see that shrewd shrews “use echolocation to explore their habitat” (Shrews ‘shrink skulls to survive the winter’, 24 October). Are they also bright enough to use dictionaries to look up unnecessarily long and unexplained words in news stories?
Steve Mason
Hornchurch, Essex
• Ken Loach says tourism is ruining Bath (Report, 21 October). I feel his pain. Gills, the excellent ironmongers in the centre of Oxford, was replaced by a nail bar.
Susan Hutchinson
Oxford
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