Well done, Gary Younge, on your appointment as professor (Report, 6 November). You have a rare talent that makes a reader feel present. I recall a May 2014 article recounting your two meetings with the late Maya Angelou which does it in spades: “As her car pulled away after dropping me off at the hotel, she put her head out of the window, waved, and shouted like a teenage girl: ‘That’s swanky!’ She was 74 and high on life.”
Siobhán Ní Chuanaigh
Dublin, Ireland
• David Dimbleby’s vox pop sessions for Panorama, previewed on Radio 4, included a woman from Merthyr who declared she would be voting for Boris Johnson because “he has balls of steel”. Does she have any evidence for this assertion? I think we should be told. Even if true, is testicular composition a good basis for our voting decisions?
Cherry Weston
Wolverhampton