Sir: Timing, they say, is the essence of good comedy. Bad luck, then, for Hackney councillor Jeremy Killingray to write his hilarious parody of crassly callous MBA-speak about social work (letter, 11 April) on the very day that Polly Toynbee reports what it is like to live in one of Hackney's housing estates ("The run-down estate we're in").

No 169: DOLLOND & AITCHISON

A PAINTED FIELD by Robin Robertson Picador pounds 12

CD-Roms

I think that I shall never see

There are two books that all Italians are forced to read by the time they leave school. One is Dante's Divine Comedy, a work whose merits and importance are contested by nobody. The other is a sweeping 19th- century historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni called I Promessi Sposi, known in its scarcely read English translation as The Betrothed.

Sir: I am writing to thank David Aaronovitch ("The Diva from Hell", 3 May) for his pointed parody of our dreadful Conservative MP for Gravesham, Mr Jacques Arnold.

Dangling from hooks over the front of the stage in the Actors Touring Company's new production of Miss Julie is a line-up of kitchen implements such as would come inhandy if you were to take up cooking a la Jeffrey Dahmer. Luridly lit through the polythene sheeting which makes the "offstage" areas macabrely visible to us, Kristin Hewson's glaring- eyed Kristin can be seen, at the start, raising a cleaver. You don't need to be a genius to predict that, sooner or later, something is for the chop. Nor does it take long to recognise that what is being knifed in the back here is Strindberg's play.

Video art: Photographer tapes Wild West enthusiasts for South Bank showing

Plot: Initially the novel is a parody of chivalric romances and reflects their episodic structure. The story is relayed by two narrators whose versions of events sometimes conflict.

reviews: Jasper Rees on the pros and cons of making jokes about burgers

If anyone can raise Deutsche Grammophon's contemporary profile, Oliver Knussen can. He must be thinking it's Christmas: a new contract - a free hand (?). How long before the commercial restraints go on? We must wait and see. And listen. Colin Matthews is a promising place to start: he isn't trendy, he certainly isn't "commercial" - not of the "new age" or "faith minimalist" persuasion. He's just a rather good composer.

It's hard to pinpoint when it was that Ken Russell drifted over the line into self-parody. There's always been an air of parody about his films, which I put down to two reasons. First, he refuses, more or less on principle, to adopt a serious tone - the seriousness, he thinks, is so deep in the core of everything he does that he can afford to chuck in a bit of arsing about on top. Second, his favourite theme is the way in which the earthy, sexy side of human natures collides with the civilised, intellectual (and, naturally, artificial) bits. This means that his films are full of lurid juxtapositions of high art and low comedy, the rarefied and the downright dirty; and this kind of juxtaposition is a common technique of parody.

I was delighted to read the extracts in The Independent Magazine from Anthony Powell's Journals ("At Lady Maggie's...", 21 January) and to marvel at the gentle mockery and delicate self-parody which was displayed. The balance was perfect. No satirist would report Thatcher's words to Tito as "I am politics" and avoid exaggerations such as "We are politics" or "Politics R us".