Gladstone collars, Anthony Eden hats, Wilson’s raincoats – now it’s Jeremy Corbyn vests. Why are male politicians judged by their clothing rather than their policies and principles?
Robert Solomon
London
• While there is outrage at taking drugs to improve athletic performance, apparently it’s fine to take drugs to improve academic performance (Modafinil hailed as the first safe “smart drug”, 20 August).
Jonathan Long
Leeds
• An unpublished drawing manual by Eric Hebborn has come to light 20 years after his death (Report, 24 August). Has anyone considered that it might be fake?
Robert Saunders
Balcombe, West Sussex
• The title of your report on epigenetics (Holocaust trauma led to changes in genes – study, 22 August) certainly fooled Hugh Dower (Letters, 23 August). Epigenetic factors do not change genes but do influence gene expression. The best evidence is that such influences only last two or three generations so do not lead to permanent changes of the kind Lamarck predicted.
Richard Gilyead
Saffron Walden, Essex
• Caroline Morehead writes that it was “not really until Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah” that the myth of the French resistance “began to fray” ( Review, 22 August). Yet Lanzmann assumes that the Holocaust could not have happened in occupied or Vichy France – partly because the Poles (in his eyes) never offered the resistance exemplified by the French.
Charles Turner
University of Warwick
• Yes, young people clap between symphony movements and old people disapprove (Notebook, 22 August) – and yes, the clapping covers up the old people’s coughing and throat-clearing. Just as long as they don’t clap in the middle of movements. Hang on a minute ...
Liz Fuller
London
