Your article about the V&A’s underwear exhibition (Briefs encounter, Review, 16 April) said there is a lack of reliable evidence on the Victorian practice of tight-lacing. May I suggest that researchers look at the correspondence columns of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine for 1867 and 1868, which contain many letters for and against tight-lacing, including some from men who say they have tried corsets themselves. The letters read rather like “below the line” comments of today.
Elizabeth Manning
Malvern, Worcestershire
• If it rained, Frances Morris might well have gone to the museum (Interview, 14 April), but here in Lancashire we’ll just have to hope the sun stays out.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
• Frances Morris wants to make Tate Modern “one of the best local museums in the country”. Is she aware that there soon won’t be any others? While she presides over a £260m extension, the recently rehoused (cost £10m) Shropshire Museum and Art Gallery will have to be closed next year, unless someone comes up with a way of running it at no cost to Shropshire council.
Andrew Bannerman
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
• If the impeachment process procedure against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff (Report, 18 April), which appears to be based on the allegation that “she broke fiscal laws by window-dressing government accounts ahead of her re-election” were to be adopted in Europe, how many current prime ministers would retain office?
Paul Hewitson
Berlin, Germany
• Far from celebrating the death of Shakespeare on 23 April 1616 – a date associated with sadness and “what might have been” – I celebrate the profound joy of his birth in 1564, which is thought to have occurred on 23 April, and all the outpouring of literary genius over the subsequent 52 years.
David Hurry
Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex
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