When Keir Starmer declares that Vladimir Putin will face “severe consequences” if he breaches a peace deal with Ukraine (Report, 20 March), I’m reminded of the 19th-century editorial in the Skibbereen Eagle, which warned that it would “keep its eye on the Emperor of Russia”. If he actually read the warning, I doubt the tsar was shivering in his boots, just as Putin won’t be today, especially with Donald Trump on his side.
David Edwards
Stockport, Greater Manchester
• Will these consequences be as severe as those felt by Benjamin Netanyahu for breaching the Palestine peace deal?
Adrian Betham
London
• Does Adrian Chiles’s big column (The world is getting noisier, and it’s making us ill. I’ve certainly played my part, 19 March) not speak to his little column (Scatter cushions and bedspreads – can someone explain to me what they’re for? 19 March)? Just bung your surplus soft furnishings in at your local echoing eatery. Sound absorbed, problem solved.
Alison Skilbeck
London
• Ever since I performed in the West Riding Youth Theatre’s production of Julius Caesar in 1966 with John Duttine as Mark Antony, I remember John on his birthday on the ides of March (Letters, 21 March). I played the soothsayer, so I guess I would know if he were no longer with us.
Penny McPhillips (nee Shaw)
Garstang, Lancashire
• Heard at a Half Man Half Biscuit gig. “Does anyone have any requests?” “Play one the drummer knows” (Letters, 19 March).
Ian Maynard
Sheffield
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