An incorrect entry in a parliamentary contacts database led us to describe Lord Strasburger, one of 63 signatories to a letter to the editor, as a crossbencher. He sits in the upper house as a Liberal Democrat (“Government must think again about tax credits, say peers”, Letters, last week).
“Verlaine, Wilde, Rimbaud and the most famous gun in literature” (News, 18 Oct, page 27) quoted a curator saying Verlaine had written his best poems while in prison but Oscar Wilde “never wrote anything significant again” after his release – overlooking The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis.
Name checks: a caption last week incorrectly attributed the book Rawblood to author “Catriona Howard”. We meant Catriona Ward (“Out with vampires, in with haunted houses”, News, last week, page 20); the chief executive of the Children’s Society is Matthew Reed, not Read (“Cameron warned that Tories are failing young people”, News, last week, page 7). And the Polish priest sacked at the Vatican is Father Krzysztof Charamsa. We called him both “Krzystof” and “Krysztof” in “Polish priest with Vatican ties sacked after revealing he is gay” (News, 4 October).
Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers’ Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk or telephone 020-3353 4656
