One important song appears to have been overlooked in the eulogies for Kris Kristofferson (Obituary, 30 September). Don’t Let the Bastards (Get You Down) is a brave song for a country singer with a military background in the Reagan era. It remains very relevant today: the opening line is “They’re killing babies in the name of freedom.”
Peter Taylor
Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear
• Steve Vanstone’s nomination of Bob Dylan as a great songwriter but a bad singer (Letters, 3 October) brings to mind another candidate for the greatest songwriter: Franz Schubert. Maria Wagner, who often heard Schubert sing in her family’s home in Vienna, said she had heard all the famous Schubert singers, “but no one sang as Schubert did, and that without a voice”.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh
• My family would just like to reassure Bob Dylan that, contrary to Steve Vanstone’s claim, they have heard us both and Bob is definitely not the worst singer of all time.
Andrew Kean
Rainham, London
• Is the greatest songwriter debate a boys’ club? Joni Mitchell has not only written wonderful lyrics, her melodies are better and her arrangements more imaginative. And as for her voice…
Orlando Goodden
Whatley, Somerset
• The seafaring Anglo-Saxons would not have given a hoot where in Europe the oak for their boats came from, so why should the reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo burial ship be made of English wood (‘They must be somewhere’: appeal for British oak to recreate Sutton Hoo ship, 4 October)?
Bill Britnell
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
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