In Vers de Société, Philip Larkin’s instinctive response to the dinner-party invitation (“My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps / To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps / You’d care to join us?”) may have been “In a pig’s arse, my friend”. However, by the end of the poem his actual response had settled into a stoical, remorseful “Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course–”. Perhaps Larkin had his fair share of “washing sherry” after all (Notebook, 2 June)?
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
• The set of Magna Carta stamps just released could be used on letters to President Obama to appeal for the release of British resident Shaker Aamer, imprisoned in Guantánamo for over 13 years without charge or trial. Magna Carta Day, 15 June, would be a good day for Shaker Aamer to be released and allowed to return to his family in the UK.
Joy Hurcombe
Worthing, West Sussex
• You say that the Magna Carta stamps (Report, 2 June) carry “quotes from historic legal documents”. When did a quotation become a quote, or an invitation an invite? I discussed this in a converse with my daughter. We put it down to the disintegrate of the English language.
John Filsak
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
• In the Guardian on 27 May: the growth of coalmining in India (Captured by carbon, p29) and the terrible heatwaves (p1). Could the Indian government discuss cause and effect please? The only way to limit the latter is to limit the former.
Brenda Boardman
Emeritus fellow, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
• “Britain’s oldest dinosaur fossil found on North Yorkshire coast” (theguardian.com, 1 June)? Keep it in the ground.
Howard Waddicor
Sheffield
• The British electoral system might best be described as disproportional misrepresentation (Editorial, 2 June).
Grenville Wall
Vantaa, Finland
