When hearts were in the Home Office

Alice Bacon, left, joins Harold Wilson, second left, and other Labour politicians in singing Auld Land Syne at party conference in 1963. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

The home secretary says that the Home Office is not fit for purpose (Report, 22 October). It was not always so. When Alice Bacon was a minister at Education, having moved there from the Home Office in the late 1960s, she told me, then Guardian education correspondent, that it was like moving from a Rolls‑Royce to a Mini.
Richard Bourne
London

• Marilyn Rowley’s problem of being woken up by the irritating BBC Sounds jingle (Letters, 17 October) can be solved by setting the sleep timer in the Sounds app to turn the programme off after 45 minutes (In Our Time lasts 50).
Tim Martineau
Prenton, Merseyside