It is clearly embarrassing for Robert Jenrick, born and educated in Wolverhampton, not to know whether it’s a town or a city (Report, 9 January) but I have some sympathy with his confusion. The definition of a city in the UK is a place which has been granted city status by the monarch, which tells us nothing, and I’m not sure on what basis Wolverhampton was chosen to be made a city in 2000. It looks and feels like a large town (population approximately 260,000); nothing wrong with that. But then I come from London, and – with apologies to Crocodile Dundee – that’s a city.
Cherry Weston
Wolverhampton
• In February 2013, in her astoundingly prescient essay ‘Royal Bodies, Hilary Mantel wrote: “Adulation can swing to persecution within hours, within the same press report: this is what happened to Prince Harry recently … [he] doesn’t know which he is, a person or a prince.” Seven years, one marriage and one child later, her words resound loud and clear, including these near the end of the essay: “I’m not asking for censorship. I’m not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.”
Peter Lee
Balfron, Stirlingshire
• I am very sorry that Gary Younge is leaving the Guardian and envious of his sociology students at Manchester (In these bleak times, imagine a world where you can thrive, Journal, 10 July). Every Friday his lucid writing and his deep insights tease my mind into active thought. I hope you will be able to replace him with someone of equal calibre. Otherwise, I fear his departure will for me, at the age of 83, be one more small step along the road to senility.
Philip Crowe
Babbinswood, Shropshire
• Rather than spending three years on a pre-marriage training course (Report, 11 January), find out how compatible you and your potential spouse are by spending a few days on a narrowboat. If you’re still speaking after the first 72 hours you’ve cracked it.
Ian Grieve
Gordon Bennett, Llangollen canal
• My wife has just made 18lb of marmalade. She is 77 and I am 78. Which of the three of us will last the longest (Letters, 10 January)?
Terry Swann
Sheffield
• I am reminded of my late father’s oft-repeated phrase throughout his nineties (he died aged 103): “I don’t even buy green bananas.”
Colin J Merry
Lincoln
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