Midsomer Norton, mentioned in your review of BBC One’s drama Shetland (G2, 14 February), is in North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg’s constituency). Its murder rate is in no way comparable to that of the fictional Shetland as your review suggests. That of the fictional county of Midsomer (located notionally somewhere between Hampshire and Berkshire but filmed around Oxfordshire) – 231 in 89 episodes – is perhaps comparable.
Ruth Eversley
Paulton, Somerset
• Why stop at driving gangs of students into the fields, like a re-enactment of Mao’s Cultural Revolution (Letters, 15 February)? Isn’t it about time all those eight-year-olds who don’t know their times tables (Report, 15 February) became productive members of society too?
Allison Neal
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
• Re the Whitechapel fatberg being in a museum (Editorial, 10 February), Joseph Beuys was already there with Untitled (Vitrine) 1983, which displays various forms of fat and invites a meditation on a material “very basic to life”. Possibly he felt grateful for being (allegedly) smeared with animal fat by Tartars, which helped him to survive the cold after his plane crash in 1944.
Hazel Imbert
Worthing, West Sussex
• I never thought my sexual history might be a matter of historical interest (Letters, 15 February), but here goes. In 1964, as a young, unmarried student in north London, my GP suggested I went on the contraceptive pill. By 1968, still single, I was regularly attending the FPA’s Margaret Pike House, in Mortimer Street, London W1.
Lesley Kant
Norwich
• In this country people are taller than they used to be, perhaps because of a better diet. Bad teeth are blamed on a worse diet, but while my diet and dental care have been exemplary, my teeth let me down in my 80s. I hope evolution (The briefing, 12 February) will eventually grant people a third set of home-grown teeth.
Gill Mulley
Saffron Walden, Essex
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