With regard to your review of the new Victoria Wood documentary (9 January), while I’ve no wish to diminish Wood’s genius or the challenges that she faced, it feels a bit of a stretch to say that by 1985 there was “doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman”. The great and often overlooked Marti Caine (who hailed from Sheffield and who, like Wood, had featured on ITV’s New Faces) had already fronted five or six series of her own before As Seen On TV came along.
Colin Daffern
Salford, Greater Manchester
• The pride Jonny Yaxley has in his work as a gravedigger at a natural burial ground made up of meadow and woodland, and his peaceful acceptance of the inevitability of death, made the article about him an unexpectedly moving read (Experience, 9 January). There can be few better places to rest a while than under a tree in a meadow.
Sue Barton
Sessay, North Yorkshire
• When I first read that Donald Trump had said that the only thing limiting his power as commander in chief was his “morality” (Report, 8 January), I misread it as “mortality”. Perhaps that would have been more accurate.
Margaret Roberts
Sheffield
• As an expatriate north-easterner from County Durham, I’ve always considered that the north doesn’t start until one crosses the Tees (Letters, 9 January).
Gordon Blunt
Market Harborough, Leicestershire
• The north does not begin in Sheffield. The north ends there.
Pete Bibby
Sheffield
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