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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Letters

Panama, Brink’s-Mat and the Queen Mother

Gold bars
Guardian reader Mark Taplin didn’t find gold bars at Crockham House, but he did find something rather touching ... Photograph: Kutay Tanir/Getty Images

The isolated Kent property of Gordon Parry described (correctly) as Crockham House (Brink’s-Mat: Heist lawyer who helped hide robbery millions, 5 April) was previously named Crockham Street and in the family ownership of Alice Bowes-Lyon in the 1930s, relation of the future Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I dismantled a wooden shed there circa 1984 in all innocence after a new owner arrived, and recall finding some very touching deceased pet headstones buried in the leaves, but no gold bars.
Mark Taplin (formerly of Kent Hatch)
York

• Your supplement “Routes into teaching” (5 April) missed a huge opportunity to highlight the shortage of male teachers, especially in the primary sector. You feature page after page of women, who already enter the profession in high numbers. White working-class boys, as you have reported recently, are not achieving as they should be in education. A more male approach to teaching these boys would go a long way to helping them. Could do better, Guardian.
Elizabeth Mueller
Glasgow

• Emily Drabble (Opinion, 6 April) asks why white (or black) middle-class Guardian readers will not care about the tragic fatal stabbing of a young black rapper on the streets of London. I also ask why nobody seems to care about the recent fatal stabbing (in Chichester) of my 18-year-old (white) great-nephew, Luke? Surely the real issue is knife crime.
Teresa Rawlings
Hove, Sussex

• It is not only the Spanish who warn that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind (Letters, 4 April). This is part of our shared Judaeo-Christian cultural heritage: see Hosea chapter 8, verse 7.
Sheila Holliday
Fareham, Hampshire

• Does anyone else agree that the paper on 5 April was one of the best the Guardian has ever published? You’re not just doing it to show off to former Indy reader Andrew Coe (Letters, 4 April), are you?
Judy Crosher
Brompton Ralph, Somerset

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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