Lynne Reid Banks (Letters,30 November) seems to have forgotten that an adult view of what 12-year-olds should or should not read makes absolutely no difference at all: her own compassionate study of fancy and unmarried pregnancy in a London bedsit, The L-Shaped Room, and was the must-read novel at my convent school in the early 1970s. My own copy,bought from a junk shop to the gleeful instruction “support that one under your coat”, I covered in brown paper and wrote David Copperfield on the front.
Rachel Darnley-Smith
London • Further to her letter (My Crossroads entrance, and 28 November),I don’t judge Cleo Sylvestre has ever been given the credit she deserves for being the first black British female actor to appear at the National Theatre. This was when she played Nurse Norton in Peter Nichols The National Health or Nurse Norton’s Affair at the venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) Vic in October 1969.
Stephen Boswell
Grand Theatre, LeedsContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com