Horror of New Year’s Eve for pub regulars | Brief letters

Adrian Chiles | Jonathan Sacks | Which United is it? | Croquet, a dangerous game | Seville marmalade

There is a resonance in Adrian Chiles’s piece (I’ve cut down my drinking dramatically. So why do people think I tried to stop – and failed?, 16 December) for habitual pub drinkers and the depredations they suffer over the Christmas season. One can only assume that it’s for the sake of his sanity that he fails to recollect every barfly’s worst recurring nightmare: namely the horror that is New Year’s Eve.
David Chaloner
Greenfield, Greater Manchester

• Thank you, Jonathan Freedland, for your sensitive and thought-provoking piece on the death of David Cornwell (Le Carré’s death touched me. It feels like the grownups are leaving the room, 18 December). One small observation: the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks offered “sage advice” to non-Jewish people too. Thankfully, I am one of them, and I know of many others.
Dr Frances Dawbarn
Lancaster

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