Polly Hudson’s article (Beards may be dirtier than toilets – but all men should grow one, 3 July) is correct on the whole, except in the assumption that all men can do so. When I was a child, my dad spent a two-week holiday not shaving and ended up with a five o’clock shadow. By coincidence, my uncle grew a bushy forest on his face during the same period. Faced with my uncle’s success, my dad promptly shaved his own attempt off and it was never spoken of again.
Years later, I was bewildered by my dad’s really quite hostile reaction when I successfully gave facial hair a go for the first time. Then I remembered.
David Gray
Birmingham
• My late husband had a beard when we met in 1966, and I only saw him clean-shaven in old photographs. It was a full beard, befitting a geologist who had spent time in the field without a mirror. It was regarded with suspicion by Scottish farmers; one even offered to shear him with his sheep. At the time, beards were associated with artists and revolutionaries. My aunts, on first meeting Jack, summed him up as “very nice, considering he has a beard”.
Susan Treagus
Didsbury, Manchester
• Polly Hudson writes: “All men look better with beards and I will die on that hill.” Perhaps Keith Flett’s Beard Liberation Front might consider awarding her honorary life membership.
Toby Wood
Peterborough
• Most, if not all, men have beards. It’s just that the intelligent ones don’t bother to scrape hair from their face every day. A pointless pastime.
Ronnie Macleod
Aberporth, Ceredigion
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