Dr Robert Smith (Letters, 3 October) describes Clint Eastwood’s film The Outlaw Josey Wales as a “piece of nonsense”. Readers will make up their own minds about the quality of Eastwood’s film. That it is in some aspects (but by no means wholly) sympathetic to the Confederate cause in the American civil war is true. But, though I have not made a systematic survey, I would judge that the majority of westerns that touch on the civil war have southern sympathies. The reasons are complex, having to do not only with American history but also with movie history. They can’t simply be reduced to Trumpism.
Edward Buscombe
(Editor, The BFI Companion to the Western), London
• Good to hear that persuading our friends in the food industry to reduce salt has worked so well (Pesto sauces ‘saltier than seawater’ despite crackdown, 4 October). Absolutely no need to legislate then.
Richard Stainer
Bradfield St George, Suffolk
• Has Boris Johnson become the Tory party’s new Kenny Everett (Theresa May faces calls to sack Boris Johnson over Libya comments, 4 October)?
Rosemary Bentley
Egham, Surrey
• So classical music doesn’t get your critic’s heart rate up (Last night’s TV, 3 October). Judging by the pages you devote to the popular stuff it is probably a view shared by the paper itself. For many people, what European composers have created over almost 500 years is one of the supreme achievements of homo sapiens. To imagine a world without it is a devastating thought. I don’t mind Rebecca Nicholson owning up to her “inner ignoramus” but does she have to be so proud of it?
Arthur Gould
Loughborough, Leicestershire
• Why do your obituaries of actors only ever seem to concentrate on what said actor did on stage or screen, but never radio? Your obituary of Benjamin Whitrow (30 September) failed to mention that one can still hear his mellifluous tones on Radio 4 Extra on Friday mornings in Simon Brett’s series After Henry. Here, Whitrow’s character, Russell, serendipitously plays the part of a second-hand bookshop owner.
Helen Adams
Guiseley, West Yorkshire
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