How sad that you present such a monochrome image of the chess world of which I have been a keen member for many years (Editorial, 12 November). I have never brought curling sandwiches in a plastic bag to a chess event. My preferred energy source is a ripe banana. When I reached in my pocket for one before a tough match, a team member once asked hopefully whether I had any heroin with me.
Rob Hull
London
• Your country diary (13 November) says: “Screams of swifts that scoured air in summer are now amplified within the walls of Pyrenean or Anti Atlas gorges.” Our common swifts are much further south than that. During November they are likely to be snapping up insects over the Congo forest.
Sarah Gibson
Author, Swifts and Us
• Here in subtropical south London, we have lemon trees flowering and setting in mid-November, as well as being harvested (Letters, 14 November). Not entirely good news, I admit.
Peter Afford
London
• Alexis Petridis describes Damon Albarn’s new album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, as “genuinely beautiful” (11 November), but fails to mention that the title is a line from Love and Memory by the poet John Clare.
Toby Wood
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
• Surely the question for LV= members (Report, 15 November) should be: “What have US private equity groups ever done for mutual businesses?”
Les Bright
Exeter, Devon
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