As a storyteller and speech and language therapist I was delighted to see Tim Lott’s article (Ditch the grammar and teach storytelling instead, 20 May). However, his emphasis turns out to be on story writing, not storytelling. Oracy has been fatally sidelined by government policies, yet we know that oral skills must be in place to ensure the development of literacy. So please, by all means teach the writing of stories, but get kids telling stories – not just myths, legends and fiction but the events and experiences of their own lives, which is the way we build empathy, resilience and the confidence to speak truth to power.
Nicola Grove
Horningsham, Wiltshire
• Channel 4’s The Trial (Last night’s TV, 22 May) is far from being the first television series to show a trial using real barristers, a real judge and a jury chosen by the same process as real ones. In 1983 I presented The Law Machine, a 10-part series transmitted by London Weekend Television, which did exactly the same. Moreover, it featured both a criminal trial and – with a different judge and barristers, and, of course, no jury – the civil proceedings for damages that arose as a result.
Marcel Berlins
London
• “Alan Titchmarsh lends the programme the gravitas it deserves” (Prince Philip: 70 Years of Service, as reviewed in the Guide, 20 May). Understated republican satire at its best.
John Pritchard
York
• The loose canon (19 May) seems to have lost God. In vain I searched for any reference to faith, hope, religion(s), the Kingdom, salvation, redemption, or Christ. Good analysis – or rather, book review – so far as it went, Giles, but give us more than Ovid! I’ve gotta preach!
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester
• Got called Plain Granny at the weekend by my grandson. The family hastily explained that this was to differentiate me from Great Granny (written Gr Gr) and Welsh Granny Nain (Letters, 20 May).
Clare Addison
Oxford
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