Kris Kristofferson’s brave anti-war song

Kris Kristofferson. ‘Don’t Let the Bastards (Get You Down) is a brave song for a country singer with a military background in the Reagan era,’ writes Peter Taylor. Photograph: Reuters

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