Re pylons (Letters, 12 August), as an admirer of these vital lifelines with their graceful catenaries, I often recall the words of Dr William Whewell (1794-1866), in his Elementary Treatise on Mechanics: “Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards.”
Ian Forman
Bishopthorpe, North Yorkshire
• Your report (English councils poised to get powers to buy greenbelt land without overpaying, 12 August) brought to mind the words of the MP John Prescott in a 1998 interview: “The green belt is a Labour achievement – and we mean to build on it.”
Anne J Palmer
Shillington, Hertfordshire
• On International Apostrophe Day, 15 August, I will be honouring our local fish-and-chip shop, which has a little fish as its apostrophe, and a bakery in town that has a tiny engine-house apostrophe celebrating Redruth’s history of tin mining (Letters, 6 August).
Sally Smith
Redruth, Cornwall
• It’s not university chancellors who make foolish decisions – that’s an honorary position (Letters, 13 August). The vice-chancellors are responsible, and they have utterly independent advisory committees who tell them how well paid they should be. The “vice” is important.
Peter Brooker
West Wickham, London
• Chuckling throughout Marina Hyde’s piece on Musk and Trump (Opinion, 13 August), I thought: does nominative determinism account for the fact that they both stink?
Sally Goldsmith
Sheffield
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