Following Nicola Sturgeon’s bravura performance on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme (Nicola Sturgeon: I feel as if I’m serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit, 31 May), I wonder how long it will be before the phrase “The elephant in the room” is replaced by “The motorhome on the drive”.
Richard Packer
Bristol
• Katie Garner says: “Once you’ve listened to Alan Rickman read The Return of the Native, you’ll be hooked on Thomas Hardy” (I devoured classic novels as a teenager. In a world of distractions, can I relearn how to read them?, 2 June). I would go further: if Rickman had read the contents on a weedkiller bottle, you’d be hooked on that as well.
Angela Barton
Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire
• My grandfather used to say of our local team, Carlisle United (of which I am still a fan): “If they were playing in our front garden I’d close the curtains” (Letters, 1 June).
Barry Norman
Drighlington, West Yorkshire
• Danny Tanzey (Letters, 1 June), responding to the assertion that in computing the nine times table the answer always adds up to nine, points out that 11 x 9 = 99. However, 9 + 9 = 18 and 1 + 8 = 9, so the numbers still add up to nine.
Nova Brockbank
Newcastle upon Tyne
• For any multiple of nine above 90, you just have to keep adding the digits until you get down to a single digit, which is always nine. A primitive but satisfactory feature of the beauty of mathematics.
Edward Collier
Cheltenham
• 9 x 9,999 = 89,991; 8 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 1 = 36; 3 + 6 = 9. Get it now?
Edward Couzens
Chichester
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