Notes and queries: What is the best last line of a novel?
Plus: Different ways of looking at the second world war; Sherlock and Doctor Who reach stalemateWhat is the best last line of a novel?"'OK baby, hold tight,' said Zaphod, 'we'll take a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.'" – Doug...
Edmund de Waal on the potter Emmanuel Cooper, ‘a true democrat’
Emmanuel Cooper (obituary, 31 January) was a true democrat. He simply refused to see hierarchies that others thought were significant, bringing a motorbike into conjunction with a bowl by Lucie Rie as his examples of good craftsmanship for a 1982 exhib...
Letters: JB Priestley remains a good companion
How prescient of the Guardian to remember JB Priestley (In praise of..., 27 January). At a time when so many of the postwar institutions that were founded on socialist principles of collective responsibility are being systematically dismantled by the c...
Letters: Barnes remembered in Linden Lea
It is pleasing when the national media periodically rediscovers William Barnes (Barnes night anyone?, 25 January). Paul Kingsnorth is right to remind us that this poet connects us with an older England, before mass industrialisation and commercialism r...
Notes and queries: How does the teaching of history differ between nations?
Plus: The full English breakfast, a la Gosford Park; The problem with Bingley-by-the-sea, by PG WodehouseIt is said that history is written by the winners, but how does the teaching of history differ between European nations? Does France teach Nap...
Letters: Dickens in Rome
Last Sunday, just a few days after BBC2 had broadcast the newly completed version of Dickens's Edwin Drood (TV review, 11 January), Carlo Fruttero, an Italian author most famous as the literary partner of Franco Lucentini, died at his home, aged 86. I ...
Notes and queries: What are the essentials of a full English breakfast?
Plus: Where three men in a boat did not want to linger; Why do fingernails grow faster than toenails?What constitutes the perfect full English breakfast?Two fried eggs, two rashers of smoked back bacon, a good quality pork sausage, a couple of slices o...
Letters: Sir Michael Dummett obituary
Alan Trangmar writes: AW Moore states that Sir Michael Dummett (obituary, 29 December) was an authority on tarot cards, and refers to his "recreational interest in the history of card games". This is true but incomplete, since he wrote a very substanti...
Letter: George Whitman obituary
Tony Myers writes: In the summer of 1990, I was bumming around France with ambitions of becoming a writer. I had been told that George Whitman (obituary, 15 December) would allow "writers" to stay above the shop at Shakespeare and Company in Paris for ...
Notes and queries: What is the condition of music?
Plus: More unloved places, from Birmingham to Cologne; why snakes are more dangerous than laddersWalter Pater said "all art constantly aspires to the condition of music". What is the condition of music?Music has the ability to convey an aesthetic messa...
Letters: Cuts in education continue from libraries to outdoor centres
You have done us all a service by exposing the damaging cuts the government is inflicting on education (Report, 27 December). Those of us who work in education have been aware of this for some time. Let me highlight two areas. While the UK languishes i...
