Elizabeth Alker’s article on Paul McCartney’s interest in avant-garde music is fascinating (‘The King Lear in I Am the Walrus? That came from John Cage’: Paul McCartney on the Beatles’ debt to great avant-garde composers, 19 August). But she omits his attendance at a production of Michael Tippett’s last opera, New Year, whose music incorporated rap and reggae, reduced the strings in the orchestra, and included saxophones, percussion and electronic space music. McCartney was so fascinated that he requested a meeting with the composer, which I arranged. The octogenarian Tippett and the young McCartney got on like a house on fire.
Meirion Bowen
London
• Your article (Teach boys and girls together about menstruation, UCL study argues, 20 August) brought me the lovely memory of my then seven-year-old son, who returned from school one day in the 1980s saying that they had had sex education. The boys were in a separate room from the girls, but he told me it didn’t matter because he talked to a girl at breaktime and “she told me all about periods and cemetery towels”.
Alyson Elliman
Carshalton, London
• Your article on pulses (17 August) might have added one further tip: a pressure cooker makes cooking dried beans almost effortless. Many varieties can be cooked, without soaking, in much less than an hour.
William Hawkins
London
• Malcolm Rush suggests that the inclusion of Mar-a-Lago in the territories to be ceded to Russia would help get the Trump-Putin deal over the line (Letters, 18 August). Many would suggest it has already been ceded.
Ian Reissman
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
• Thanks to Keith Flett for providing his age (Letters, 20 August), but it’s dispiriting to find that, when you’ve long regarded him as the grandaddy of the letters page, you’re older than him.
Anne Cowper
Swansea
• The return of “Smarty-pants” for rare words in Wordiply is sheer prestidigitation and I am flabbergasted at the speed of your capitulation (Letters, 20 August).
Maria Koval
London
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