Mark Cocker’s eloquent article (Look up, listen, and be very concerned. Birds are vanishing – and their crisis is our crisis, 17 April) should be required reading for Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, and for all those working for Defra, and all farmers and landowners in this country. It brought me to tears.
Helen Owen
Ludlow, Shropshire
• How could Alexis Petridis (Serge Gainsbourg’s 20 greatest recordings – ranked!, 13 April) have ignored Gainsbourg’s beautiful, clever tribute to Prévert’s Les Feuilles Mortes in his song La Chanson de Prévert? To my mind, his true poetic gift and his ability to parody and to rhyme are at their peak in this song, written in the 60s.
Jennifer Symien
Bedford
• Marcia Wheeler (Letters, 10 April) recommends a prequel to Treasure Island. One sequel stands out: Silver’s Revenge by Robert Leeson. It has a gripping court scene that draws out the class implications of the plot by showing that the squire and his gang have no more right to the treasure than Silver and his men; they are all thieves and murderers.
Michael Harrison
Oxford
• I sympathise with Gaby Hinsliff’s identity-proving concerns, having had a maiden name and a few married ones (Voter ID will disenfranchise poor and marginalised people. Our best defence? Talk about it, 18 April). My solution was to have an AKA (also known as) in my passport, to add married names. Worked like a charm, and made me feel like a rock star, too.
Penny Bickerstaff
London
• Is the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha transformation to Windsor an example of being woke before woke’s first recorded use?
Dr Harpreet S Kohli
Glasgow
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