Fake books are older than you seem to think (Fake books: the controversial interiors trend for literary pretenders, 1 May). Charles Dickens created “faux-aged spines” to line the door of his study at Gad’s Hill Place, his house in Kent. He gave them such titles as History of a Short Chancery Suit in Twelve Volumes, and Hansard’s Guide to Refreshing Sleep. I doubt it was to show people that he was literate.
Harland Walshaw
Lympstone, Devon
• I would love to see Adrian Chiles’s gardening show (The unspoken truth about gardening? It is a relentless, unwinnable war, 4 May) as I too come from the Attila the Hun school of gardening, and feel I never got far enough to learn from the others.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
