Your correspondents are too quick to praise live screenings (Letters, 2 August). Live screenings may be a valid experience when I see overprovided and oversubsidised London audiences flocking to performances beamed from Newcastle, Wakefield, Truro etc, where costs are cheaper and where professional theatre is comparatively rare. The present arrangement is a stale excuse from so-called national companies to avoid their responsibilities to those of us for whom London is not accessible.
Don Moore
Garstang, Lancashire
• What constitutes high quality? What if I don’t like opera (OK, I quite like Carmen) and only drink beer? Does that make me a northern heathen? Any road up, it’ll be reet when I see Gandalf and Jean-Luc Picard at’t Lyceum next Tuesday. No wine at the interval!
David Elsom
Sheffield
• Maybe this hand-washing thing (Letters, 3 August) comes from the US. WH Auden criticised “the American habit of washing one’s hands after pissing, as if the penis were an object, too filthy for any decent person to touch”. Americans do seem particularly enthusiastic about it, often scrubbing up as if they were about to carry out open-heart surgery.
Bev Littlewood
Richmond, London
• Regarding “Honestly, you really must come round for dinner soon” (30 July). I did once hear the Swedish language referred to as ordfattig (word poor). That apart, I loved Andrew Brown’s article and please do insist he drops round for supper – anytime.
Deborah von Kohler
St Austell, Cornwall
• Samantha Cameron’s stylist and George Osborne’s aide are in line for OBEs on top of generous salaries (Report, 1 August). No award for Josh Coombes, a young barber who gives free haircuts to the homeless in Exeter, there no doubt thanks to Cameron’s and Osborne’s austerity measures.
Sue Boulding
Baschurch, Shropshire
• So the Guardian is encouraged to drop titles and stick to the given name and surname (Letters, 3 August). An excellent idea. Quakers have been doing this for more than 350 years.
Janie Cottis
Wantage, Oxfordshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
