Re Emma Beddington’s article (Is commuting good for you? I miss the break between work and home, 13 February), if you work from home, find a nice local with a good bunch of early-doors regulars and spend the time you would have spent commuting in there having a pint and a laugh. As well as saving money on commuting, you’ll be supporting the pub, and I guarantee that you’ll go home happier, work forgotten.
Michael Fuller
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
• Sean Wood (Country diary, 13 February) raises his hip flask of malt whisky to a rarely seen pine marten and says to himself: “In the style of Robert Burns … ‘It’s a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht’.” He appears to have confused his Scottish bards: “It’s a braw bricht moonlit nicht” is a line from A Wee Deoch-an-Doris, a song co-written and sung by the inimitable Sir Harry Lauder about a century ago.
Mike Pender
Cardiff
• “It’s a braw bricht moonlit nicht” is from Lord Rockingham’s XI’s UK No 1 hit Hoots Mon! in 1958.
John Starbuck
Lepton, West Yorkshire
• It was ironic that the record that prevented Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s Only Love Can Break a Heart, as sung by Gene Pitney, from reaching No 1 in the US was He’s a Rebel by the Crystals, written by Pitney (Burt Bacharach obituary, 9 February).
Phil Rhoden
Kidderminster, Worcestershire
• Turkey issued 100 arrest warrants within days of buildings collapsing in the earthquakes (Report, 12 February). The UK has issued none years after Grenfell.
Alan Shepherd
Penzance, Cornwall
• I share Kathryn Davidson’s passion for the UK’s public libraries (The British Library doesn’t need £500m – but local libraries do, 10 February). I am keen to clarify, though, that our planned extension at St Pancras is being funded through a development partnership, at no cost to the public purse.
Roly Keating
Chief executive, British Library
