Letters in brief

l ANDY Beckett ("Nomad about the boy", Review, 2 February) tells us that Bruce Chatwin used no metaphors or similes, but his first quotation from Chatwin (the waters of Cape Horn "boiling and slavering") has two metaphors in three words.

Brian Fewster, Leicester

l GEOFFREY Lean (2 February) is not entirely correct to attribute Margaret Thatcher's short-lived green conversion to a paper sent to her by Sir Crispin Tickell. Her "conversion" had a lot more to do with the 1989 Euro- elections where the Greens got 9 per cent (in Scotland) and 15 per cent (in England and Wales) of votes cast.

Eleanor Scott

Evanton, Highland

l MAY I be allowed to make a slight correction regarding Robert Butler's comment about Eric Sykes's debut in the West End, in School for Wives ("Opening this week", Real Life, 2 February).

I seem to remember seeing him some years ago in the West End in Run for your Wife.

M J Haczkiewiez

Northampton

l THE hill figure in Train Landscape by Eric Ravilous ("The 100 best paintings in Britain?", Review, 2 February) is the Westbury White Horse, not, as stated, a South Downs figure. Ravilous painted another version of the horse and train from a hill-top viewpoint in the same year, 1939.

A Palmer

Child Okeford, Dorset