LETTERS: BRIEFLY

MAY I clarify the position about the V&A's name ("Museum boss wants 'snappy' new name for V&A", 30 August). My editorial for the V&A Magazine reflected in a light-hearted manner on our name, offered a bottle of champagne to anyone coming up with a good alternative, but concluded firmly that, like the Louvre, we should stick with our title. A journalist misread my piece and produced a sensationalist story.

ALAN BORG

Director, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

HOW young does one have to be to read your paper? Am I in serious danger of people laughing behind my back as I collect it from my newsagent? To Anne McElvoy, "Standing at the Door" is an "angry old political folk song" (20 September). To me it is one of the songs Alex Glasgow wrote for Alan Plater's Close the Coalhouse Door, which I saw in 1972. If the 1970s produced "old folk songs", presumably the 1960s produced Saxon epics?

MARGARET A E BARTON

Corby Glen, Lincolnshire

YOUR feature on the impending demise of the "lion" hallmark ("British lion is replaced by a number in the age of the Euro hallmark", 20 September), seeks to portray it, and indeed the idea of being "British", as something that has been around forever. I would guess that the average Welsh, Scottish or Ulster person feels no affinity with this symbol of English bloody- mindedness.

STEPHEN HUGHES Hoylake, Merseyside

TUBERCULOSIS is a bacillus, not a virus (Review, 20 September). If your team invites me to dinner, I will enlighten them on the differences between the lactobacillus in their yoghurt and the penicillium spores on their bibs.

ALAN H JAMES

Carshalton Beeches, Surrey

NOT only is London Underground looking for someone who can give Japanese announcements, but I suspect you are too ("Soon the last train to Cockfosters...", 20 September). You match "Please seek another route" with the Japanese for "The up escalators are not working", and match that with the Japanese for "Please move right down inside the cars".

ROGER WILLIAMS, Glasgow