Bruce Holman (Letters, 30 January) is a little wayward in his Latin. Culus is strictly the anus – quite rare, and only in the singular, in classical Latin, but no doubt medieval monks had more occasion to refer to it, because it survives in French cul, and English cul-de-sac, for which the more fastidious French prefer the expression rue sans issue. The kickable zone is generally referred to as either nates or clunes, almost invariably in the plural. In neither case would the term need pedantic Latinising.
Charles Baily
Bedford
• Why not just kick them in their ba?
Bill Willoughby
St Ives, Cambridgeshire
• I delight in informing amazed American visitors to Syon House, home of the dukes of Northumberland, that the first duke’s illegitimate son, James Smithson (nee Macie), left his fortune to found The Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian museum plans London offshoot, 29 January). Whatever next? That baseball was invented in England?
Patrick Russell
Seasonal room guide, Syon House
• Has Giles Fraser read any PG Wodehouse? He describes clerics as “fawning Jeeves-like courtiers who prefer dressing up to speaking out” (Loose canon, 31 January). Jeeves is not fawning or obsequious: he rules Bertie Wooster with an iron hand and is never afraid to speak out.
Siobhan McGovern
Edinburgh
• My mother regularly sent me to school on a gin and orange in the 1960s on the first day of my period (Letters, 30 January). Worked a treat. The only time she refused was the day of my English O-level, with the consequence that I passed out in the middle of the exam.
Mary Smith
Bearsted, Kent
