Cameras we owned way before the 1970s

A Kodak ‘Box Brownie’ camera from the 1930s. Photograph: Nick Scott/Cameras/Alamy

I was astounded by Viv Groskop’s comment that “Most people didn’t own cameras” in the 1970s (‘It looked stunning on Joanna Lumley!’, 25 August). This might have been true in the early 20th century, but even my mother, born in 1916, had her faithful Box Brownie, with which she took photos of family and friends in the 40s and 50s, and later I was taking slides on an Agfa Silette 35mm in the 1960s.
Marie Paterson
Nuneaton, Warwickshire

• Re your editorial on writers’ abodes (18 August) and Michael Wild’s letter (20 August), I should like to point out that a cottage on the Newstead Abbey estate was the home of the bestselling novelist Dorothy Whipple for several years in the 1930s, and is the setting for her 1939 novel, The Priory.
Jeremy Hilton
Bridport, Dorset