Grounds for doubts over Henry’s coffee

Laurence Olivier in the 1944 film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Photograph: Two Cities/Sportsphoto/Allstar

I am loth to mock a Guardian news item, but the timely report in your print edition (Does shock find push our love of coffee back to reign of Henry V?, 1 April) fails to mention an earlier excavation in the grounds of Maxwell House, in the village of Brew. Among the relics discovered by the archaeologist Corr Tardo were late Roman amphorae, hinting that Nero may have been drinking a cappuccino as Rome burned.
David Jeffrey
West Malvern, Worcestershire

• Your report may have implications for our interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. If the “tun of treasure” offered by the French ambassador to King Henry contains not tennis balls but coffee beans (no doubt from the then French protectorate of San Serriffe), the implied insult could be that the young king is a hot-headed caffeine-fuelled chancer.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire