Thank you to Simon Armitage for his moving poem, and to Harriet Sherwood for providing the wider context (Poet laureate Simon Armitage writes Ukraine war poem Resistance, 11 March). There is of course also the poetry written during the siege of Leningrad in the second world war – particularly poignant in the current situation.
Aileen Rambow
London
• Your editorial (10 March) refers to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a rhetorician, war leader and former comedian. A more famous example of an artist-turned-war hero is perhaps Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish pianist and composer, who in 1919 became the Polish prime minister, foreign minister and signer of the treaty of Versailles.
Trevor Lindley
Weymouth, Dorset
• It can be hard to view all the creatures residing in our garden with equanimity (The Guardian view on slugs and snails: what’s in a name? Plenty it turns out, 13 March). The name I would give to the snail which just ate all 40 of the sweet pea seedlings in my cold frame you would be unlikely to print.
Robin Mills
Cerne Abbas, Dorset
• Re Rod Stewart filling in his potholes (Letters, 15 March), when we lived in Herefordshire it was said that while the UK drove on the left of the road, Herefordians drove on what was left of the road.
Martin Kirk
Botesdale, Suffolk
• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe released. At last, a legitimate reason for a Downing Street party.
Toby Wood
Peterborough
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