Strange that you should illustrate your story (A final farewell to Fleet Street, 6 August) with pictures of the Daily Mail, which was in Tudor Street. Just as the News of the World and then the Sun was in Bouverie Street. If you extend the definition of “Fleet Street” to include neighbouring streets, all of us who work for the Euromoney group’s publications in London are still here, including me. We’re closer to Fleet Street than the Daily Mail was at the time those pictures were taken.
Alan Burkitt-Gray
Editor, Capacity and Global Telecoms Business, 8 Bouverie Street, London
• Your style guide says: “Use an before a silent H: an heir, an hour, an honest politician, an honorary consul; use a before an aspirated H: a hero, a hotel, a historian” (Corrections and clarifications, 6 August). Besides sounding like the themes for two novels, it must make those who say “haitch” feel a bit of an herb.
Brian Smith
Berlin, Germany
• So Grayson Perry (Back to school, G2, 8 August) envisages that “Fifty years down the line, instead of dashing off watercolours in the village art club, little old ladies will be sitting around doing conceptual art”. I’d expect someone of his imaginative fluidity to be free of such retrograde stereotypes.
Val Mainwood
Colchester
• Like Mr Roland (Letters, 8 August) I have actually used the somewhat challenging word eleemosynary, when writing to thank my college for giving me a charitable grant in 1970 from its Eleemosynary Fund. This now means I have used it four times in my life, and unlike the child genius I still had to check the spelling.
Peter Hutchinson
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
• It was heartening to see Peter Bradshaw’s celebration of the fact that no one now refers to Northern Ireland as “the Province” (Bobby Sands: 66 Days review, 5 August). Unfortunately, this has been replaced by the practice of using the word “mainland” to refer to Britain rather than to continental Europe. The struggle continues.
Gerry McMulllan
Birmingham
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