Your item on Kirkcudbright suggests a visit to nearby Drumlanrig Castle, with its “collection of paintings, furniture, silver, tapestries and porcelain” (An arty weekend in … Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, 20 March). It’s a shame you didn’t also recommend a visit to the village of Wanlockhead to discover how the vast wealth to build and furnish Drumlanrig was generated – lead mining in terrible conditions, using children as young as seven.
Margaret Farnworth
Liverpool
• In your print edition, you squeezed a brief piece on the export ban on Coleridge’s 1792 poem against slavery (Report, 17 March) under a long article on Jane Austen’s 1798 letter on her nanny. Ironic, considering her family’s “complex entanglements with slavery”, discussed by Devoney Looser in a TLS article in May 2021.
Prof JK Cruickshank
Camden, London
