Isn’t it time we stopped using the word “migrant” to describe people risking their lives to flee a war that has killed 200,000 Syrians, wounded millions (physically and mentally), and made millions more homeless (Vessel abandoned with 450 migrants on board, 3 January)? Surely they are refugees and/or asylum seekers. Defining them otherwise turns them into cannon fodder for our own economic, political and racial xenophobes.
Ivan Rendall
Kings Green, Worcestershire
• Ian Bostridge’s reflections on “crossovers” between classical and popular performance (Cold comfort, Review, 2 January) remind me of the surprising example in Richard Whorf’s film It Happened in Brooklyn: Sinatra singing an English version of Don Giovanni’s Là Ci Darem la Mano. Quirky, but not at all unpleasant.
Martin Brady
London
• Bill Gabbett (Letters, 3 December) refers to English public school boys who (some people think) “won the Battle of Britain”. Just for the record, of the 3,000 fighter pilots recorded as having flown sorties in that encounter, 600 (20%) were known to have attended a public school.
John Prance
Preston
• Young independent filmmakers Shut Out The Light have produced a powerful short film Still Ragged: 100 Years of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Letters, 1 January), which they have been touring and is available via their website.
Dr Nicola Wilson
University of Reading
• Mary Gildea calls for an experiment where the country is run by non-male people (Letters, 5 January). We ran that experiment – we called it Thatcherism – and we’re still paying for it now.
PA Chalmers
Southwick, West Sussex
• A few years ago I passed a sign outside a church in Bradford: “Prayer – the original Wi-Fi” (Lloyd Webber calls for Wi-Fi for all churches, 5 January).
John Comino-James
Kingston Stert, Oxfordshire
