Letter: A miner's lot

ir: I recently received my copy of the National Theatre's summer programme and my "Dear Mailing List Member" letter from Trevor Nunn. In his letter Mr Nunn makes the analogy between being director of the National and being a miner. For example he begins, "I am writing to you having just come up blinking into the daylight for a few hours before I go back down the mine," and ends with: "Now I must get my canary and go back down into the pouring dark."

I am a white, middle-class, middle-aged female who, to misquote Oscar Wilde, has "never seen a mine", and I find this comparison offensive. I think it unlikely, that as director of the National, Mr Nunn will ever be in danger from catching emphysema or being suffocated and crushed to death by falling rocks in a mine-shaft accident. He is of course likely to suffer the pain and agony of being photographed in soft focus with his beautiful actress wife at his side by the world's foremost photographers.

JANE WHITFIELD

New Malden, Surrey