How the gentle will get in on the darkest days | Quick letters

Yet another song by Leonard Cohen, Anthem, is just one that I would like performed at my have funeral, fairly than Hallelujah (Editorial, 1 July). Cohen died in November 2016, just before Trump was elected. Considering the fact that then, the text of the refrain have sustained me by the darkest days of our modern heritage: “Forget your excellent offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. Which is how the mild will get in.”
Ray Jenkin
Cardiff

Lots of years in the past we accompanied the late, good Michael Foot to Glyndebourne for an opera by his beloved Rossini. As he sat experiencing a glass of champagne in the interval, a passing toff expressed shock at seeing him there. “Nothing,” retorted Michael, “is way too fantastic for the workers” (Letters, 1 July).
Sheila Williams
London

Presented the incidence of photograph-finishes, past-fence-fallers, penalty shootouts and many others, conducting blood pressure checks in betting stores (Report, 1 July) must yield some extraordinary but predictable effects: relatively like hooking Boris Johnson up to a polygraph in the course of PMQs.
Alan Knight
Oxford

“Also in attendance, in the royal box, will be an ancestor of Lesley Godfrey, who hit the initially ball on Centre Court” (More than 1,500 refugees invited to Wimbledon for centenary event, 1 July). Where by on earth did they dig them up from?
Pete Lawson
Sunderland

Thanks for Lev Parikian’s exquisite glimpse into an alien, avian earth (State, diary, 2 July) and its outstanding play on text: “Not so significantly deja vu as nightjar vu”.
Alison Leonard
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire