To slightly misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one Johnson may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness (Blow for May as second Johnson brother quits over Brexit proposals, 10 November).
George Steel
Liverpool
• Martin Kettle writes about how the British cultural cringe before the US affects journalists and broadcasters (Journal, 9 November). Could he by any chance be referring to the first nine pages of Thursday’s Guardian on the US midterm elections?
Keith Owen
Exeter
• Laurence Binyon’s poem is doubly misquoted (Letters, 10 November). He wrote “Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn”, meaning hold in contempt. The incorrect “condemn” has a very different meaning.
Stephen Grove
Totnes, Devon
• The “striker” who caught reader AJ Mullay’s notice on the memorial roll of the old North British Railway at Waverley station (Letters, 10 November) would have been a blacksmith’s assistant. They were the men at the heavy end of the trade who used sledgehammers on red-hot forgings held and shaped by the blacksmith. Your striker would almost have certainly worked at the now-defunct Cowlairs workshops of the NBR sited in Glasgow’s east end.
David Walsh
Redcar, Cleveland
• I notice Damon Albarn, in John Harris’s article in G2 (9 November), is pictured wearing a London borough council donkey jacket. Now that’s what I call cultural appropriation!
Robert Brady
Isleworth, Middlesex
• Now that Stokes and Foakes are in form for England (Sport, 9 November), surely it is time that Woakes rejoined the starting XI?
Dr Peter B Baker
Prestwood, Buckinghamshire
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