I still don’t understand why the fact that éclair meaning “lightning” in French is a masculine noun explains why it is also masculine when it refers to the patisserie (Letters, 24 August). Why wouldn’t it be?
Michael Bulley
Chalon-sur-Saône, France
• Though London has no statue of Joseph Priestley (Letters, 25 August), there is a magnificent one in Leeds’s City Square. He was born in Birstall, near Batley in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His ministry was at Mill Hill Chapel, a Unitarian church in Leeds.
Ann Lynch
Skipton, North Yorkshire
• You listened and told the Codeword setter to only reveal two letters, not three. He didn’t like it and sneaked in B and Q on Friday (25 August).
Ian Cumming
Colchester
• At Tyne Cot Giles Fraser (Loose canon, 25 August) should have looked for the grave of Second Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young (aged 26). The stone reads: “Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war.”
Michael Naish
London
• “Wirelessly connected HGVs will travel in convoy” (Motorway trials of driverless trucks get go-ahead, 25 August) with a view to reducing congestion, eh? Maybe we could put even more of them together, with one driver at the front, on special tracks, and call them “trains”.
Sally Cheseldine
Edinburgh
• As I recall, in the bad old days when we all smoked, if a tick dug into you (or your dog) a gentle tap with the lit end of a fag caused the little beast to retract and die (Once bitten …, G2, 23 August). Advice given to me by a Scottish shepherd in the 1960s, and it worked.
Eunice Kenny
Hove, East Sussex
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