Graham Joyce Photo: BETH GWINN/WRITER PICTURES

Graham Joyce, who has died aged 59, was a multi-award-winning author of what was usually described as “dark fantasy” – his long suit was atmosphere and the ability to marry the magical with the quotidian; and his books occupied narrative territory similar to contemporary reinventors of the fairy tale such as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll.

The titles of several of Joyce’s books — such as Dreamside, The Tooth Fairy, House of Lost Dreams, The Limits of Enchantment and Some Kind of Fairy Tale — made no secret of this tendency. His ready incorporation of the eerie or mystical with the matter-of-fact led to comparisons with the magical realism of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, but he regarded it as being in a much more English tradition, often citing Arthur Machen as a formative influence.

^{Covers of two Graham Joyce novels}

Graham William Joyce was born on October 22 1954 and grew up at Keresley, a mining village near Coventry in the industrial West Midlands. He described the women in his family as prone to dreams and visions which they regarded as part and parcel of everyday life: “They just accepted this mystery and then they cooked the dinner.”

His first piece of writing was an attempt to provide an account of his junior school’s success in the football shield in the dialect of his teacher, who had a broad Yorkshire accent. Football remained an enthusiasm; he was the regular goalkeeper for the England Writers team. At 16, he started his first novel – “a really bad spy story” – and got a job mixing cement in a builder’s yard.

Joyce continued to write, without any commercial success, and trained as a teacher at Bishop Lonsdale College in Derby, where he lived in a bedsit, for which he paid £2.50 a week. After gaining his BEd in 1977 he went on to Leicester University, where he studied English Literature and met his wife, Sue.

Upon graduating, he took a part-time job with the National Association of Youth Clubs, reasoning that it would give him time to write. But he enjoyed little success, while his work became full-time.

Joyce claimed that he felt miserable during this period – he was strongly opposed to Margaret Thatcher’s government – and after eight years he quit his job to have one last stab at making a career as a writer. His wife also left her job as a solicitor, and the two drove to Greece, choosing at random to settle on Lesbos.

After a year the manuscript of Dreamside, which dealt with college students experimenting with lucid dreaming, was accepted by Pan Macmillan, and Joyce and his wife used the advance to explore the Middle East before returning to Leicester. By the time it was published in 1991, he had written two others.

One did not find favour with his agent, but the other, Dark Sister, a tale of occult herbalism in Leicester, won the British Fantasy Award for 1993. His fourth novel, Requiem, and his fifth, The Tooth Fairy, took the same prize in 1996 and 1997, as did 1999’s Indigo. The Facts of Life (2002) won the World Fantasy Award.

What made this steady output and success the more remarkable was the range of subjects and settings Joyce was prepared to explore. Apart from the elements of the fantastic, the books had little in common. Requiem was set in Jerusalem and used religious divisions to mirror personal distances; The Tooth Fairy was a coming of age tale of loss and maturity; and Indigo drew on art and cultural clashes to examine ways of seeing.

In all Joyce produced more than a dozen novels, as well as collections of short stories, and the non-fiction football memoir Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular (2009), which was shortlisted for William Hill Sports Book of the Year. From 1996, he also taught Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, which awarded him a PhD (for published fiction; his Master’s thesis had focused on Thomas Pynchon).

Smoking Poppy (2001) was set amid Thai hill tribes, while Memoirs of a Master Forger (2008), purportedly by an alcoholic bibliophile who can see demons, was actually published under the name of the central character, William Heaney. Some Kind of Fairy Tale (2012) described the return of a missing girl, unchanged after 20 years.

Graham Joyce was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma last year. He documented his experience of chemotherapy, and the way in which the disease made him look differently at the world, on his blog, which brought him many messages of support from readers. His last novel was The Year of the Ladybird, a ghost story set in the long hot summer of 1976, and his most recent publication a collection of short stories, 25 Years in the Mines, with a cover designed by his 18-year-old daughter, Ella.

He is survived by his wife, their daughter and son, Joe.

Graham Joyce, born October 22 1954, died September 9 2014

I am surprised that in all the hubbub about Scottish secession from the United Kingdom, so little reference has been made to the 19th-century American experience. For instance, Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential inaugural address (4 March 1861), a passionate plea to avoid civil war, demonstrates the immense relevance of that experience to our difficulties. He said to the Southern states, and seems to be saying to Scotland:

“Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends?”

The implications of this, for us are plain. What is at stake is not just the Act of Union but the future of all the people of the island of Britain, who cannot but remain face to face (as Lincoln puts it). If the Scottish Nationalists are serious about reform, they should demand that the whole British people come together to exercise their constitutional right of amending their government. All other courses, including secession and “devo max”, threaten all of us with years of disorder, and no satisfactory outcome, perhaps, at the end.

I hope that the Scots, whose nationalist leaders seem so indifferent to anything except their own immediate interests, will vote no on referendum day; and then that all of us Britons can elect a constitutional assembly to address the problems so dismally threatening our future together – a future which, I repeat, is, as Lincoln helps us to see, inescapable.
Hugh Brogan
Research professor of history, University of Essex

• My great-grandfather Keir Hardie, one of the founder members of the Independent Labour party, believed passionately in the concept of home rule but also in a socialist party built on solidarity and unity. Salmond and co are cynical with their half-truths about creating a state where social mobility and welfare for the poor will flourish. North Sea oil, which is beginning to sound as large as the North Sea itself, will need investment to maintain and will eventually dry out. Businesses may well come on low corporation tax but will they stay if their profits are capped? And if they do, will they reinvest their profits in the economy or do as they are doing elsewhere in the world keep them in-house or move them elsewhere to some safe tax haven?

Nationalism fosters insularity and hostility. However, we have a grumpy neighbour. I have spent 50 years in education and counselling and know that one difficult kid can bring the class down. Eventually you have to open the door and tell them to go. The rest of the class thrive in their absence, as the UK will do. We are an intelligent, determined nation and have survived far worse than this.
Kate Axford
Selby, Yorkshire

• I recall that the Guardian initiated a letter-writing campaign to US voters prior to the 2004 presidential election (Report, 22 October 2004). I wish to respond to voters in the British Isles and suggest that Scottish citizens vote in favour of independence. This is a historic moment. This is your chance to utterly and totally transform the British Isles. You are the change that you’ve been waiting for. Since 2008 the citizens of the United States have had so much hope and change that it wouldn’t be right to keep it all on this side of the Atlantic. Next weekend I urge all eligible voters in Scotland to break the chains that bind you to the English and Welsh. Assert yourselves and go forward.

Depending on the outcome, Welsh citizens might consider a referendum of their own.
Martha Furman Kojro
Rolla, Missouri, USA

• The campaign has been brilliant to observe and seemingly galvanising for all those who can vote. We should thank those who made the referendum possible. And as the vote draws near, one central issue has been thrown into stark relief – simply, as the no campaign demonstrates, across all its arguments, that the rUK currently subsidises Scotland and in exchange Scotland sends 40 or so Labour MPs to Westminster – is this the sustainable deal all the citizens of the UK freely buy into? Are the unemployed, the strained social services, the poor housing, the old and infirm, the health services, the universities in the rUK better serviced by the subsidies and disproportionate allocation of public funds to Scotland than a new partnership with an independent Scotland?

As Madeleine Bunting points out (Comment, 10 September) there is a huge opportunity for reinvention of politics, of identity, of new alliances; let us hope that Scotland will seize the opportunity and help propel the whole of the UK into a new age of enlightened politics.
Howard Williams
London

Nowhere in the discussion of garden cities (Rogers attacks ‘ridiculous’ plan for garden cities in green belt, 9 September) is there any mention of manorial rights. It has only recently been made known by the Land Registry that these feudal rights still exist, affecting 100,000 freehold properties nationwide, allowing hunting, shooting, fishing and mining for minerals over those properties. Councils that own freeholds and lease out properties to tenants are also affected by this. Nobody mentioned the existence of manorial rights when Welwyn Garden City was set up or disposed of by Margaret Thatcher, and nothing was ever mentioned during searches or conveyancing for property sales. A national campaign to abolish manorial rights, the Peasants’ Revolt, has been initiated in Welwyn Garden City. Manorial rights have already been abolished in Scotland. We wrote to Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband about this issue, but have received no replies.
Richard and Janet Woodward
Welwyn Garden City

•  One of the central strategies of Ebenezer Howard’s “town-country garden city” was to spatially separate dwelling from workplace. This separation has become a widely accepted central plank of urban planning and associated governance systems, an unexpected consequence of which has been to drive home-based work underground.

With structural unemployment, a globalising economy and enabling new technologies, the home-based workforce is now growing rapidly. This popular, family-friendly working practice has the potential to benefit the city, the economy and the environment.

Many home-based workers operate covertly, fearing they are, or actually are, breaking some regulation or other. It is crucial, as we think about the housing crisis, that we do not repeat past mistakes. Today’s dwellings are often also workplaces. They, and their neighbourhoods, need to be designed and governed differently. The garden city is not the answer.
Dr Frances Holliss
London Metropolitan University

As your otherwise excellent article states, poutine is a dish prepared with curd cheese, fried potato and the cooking juices from a roast (The posh chips and gravy taking over the world, G2, 8 September). If you deem such a food to be “posh” I shudder to think what might qualify as “proletarian”. Moreover, as a Canadian, I take exception to this imposition of your society’s obsession with class on to one of the most democratic foods the world has ever known. Poutine, in its original and natural state, is an honest food. It does not pretend to refinement or sophistication, and yet (as any consumer of a truly great poutine will tell you) its simple constituent parts combine to form a complex and uniquely satisfying food. It wants to be enjoyed by all – be they lords or labourers.
Zachary A Palmer Laporte
London

• No doubt the Vatican cricket team’s maiden tour of England (Report, 10 September) will find its way into Wisden, which is, after all, the Bible of cricket. And presumably any return fixtures can be played on the square at St Peter’s, which is more than a match for the square at Lord’s.
Adrian Brodkin
London

• Patrick Wintour writes (Cameron could secure his place in history – as PM who lost Scotland, 10 September) that (in 1982) “Lord Carrington was the last cabinet minister to resign … as a matter of honour”. But did not Robin Cook do so in 2003, when he resigned as leader of the House of Commons because of the Iraq war?
Claude Scott
Richmond, Surrey

• How marvellous to see Annie Freud, at 66, included in the list of next generation poets (Double recognition for genre-busting poet, 11 September). As a 48-year-old working on my first collection, this news has markedly improved my morning.
Emma Must
Belfast

• With respect, talking of “the world’s first artwork” dating back to 77,000 years before present (Letters, 8 September) underestimates H sapiens. Evidence indicates that human art had its origins 110,000 years ago at various near east sites and probably earlier.
Dr John Jennings
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

While I agree with Dr Jane Darke about honouring those who fell in the second world war (Letters, 6 September), it is high time for national recognition of the part Poland played in the allied victory. It was the fourth largest allied armed force and played vital roles in most of the main theatres of war – North Africa, Monte Casino, Arnhem and many more, plus had a crucial role in cracking the Enigma code.

In 1940, before the US and USSR entered the war on the allied side, Poland played a vital role in the Battle of Britain. There were times when one out of five or six pilots was Polish. The entirely Polish 303 squadron scored the highest number of “kills” in the battle. After the war, Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, wrote that without the Polish contribution “I hesitate to say that the outcome of the battle would have been the same”. It really was down to the wire.

Poland lost more people pro rata than any other nation including USSR. How did we acknowledge this? The Polish land forces were excluded from the victory parade on 8 June 1946 for fear of upsetting Stalin. It is time to acknowledge with gratitude what we owe to the Poles.
Joseph Cocker
Leominster

• Soon the brave men and women who endured the trials of a world war will all be gone. That is why every year I take a group of children to Arnhem in Holland to hear, first hand, the stories of a bitter battle told by those who fought it.

Last year, at a ceremony in the main cemetery, we witnessed a young soldier fainting while on duty. The first to his side was no medic or first aider. It was an elderly figure, wearing beret and medals, who had leapt from his chair and run all of 40 metres to help – it was 92-year-old Arnhem veteran Johnny Peters. We stood witnessing an extraordinary act of selflessness and camaraderie, instinctive and undimmed after all these years.

This month is the 70th anniversary of the battle at Arnhem. The last survivors will make one final pilgrimage. Peters will not be present. He passed away last month. But the qualities of that extraordinary generation, embodied in men like Peters, will live on. Their legacy will endure. It is a lesson not found in any school curriculum.
Titus Mills Headmaster, Walhampton school, Lymington

Today, negotiators meet in Brussels to finalise an EU-Canada “free trade” deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta). Like the EU-US deal being discussed, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Ceta contains a controversial clause to allow large companies to sue governments over decisions they believe could harm their profits. This “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system circumvents existing court systems and could be a barrier to democratic policymaking.

In Britain, Ceta could threaten the NHS, public education and other public services, as well as our ability to regulate a host of industries from fracking to finance. Despite widespread public concern over ISDS, trade negotiators have seen fit to keep it in Ceta. If the British government doesn’t challenge it this week, neither European or British parliaments have the ability to amend a deal whose text still remains formally secret. Today is business secretary Vince Cable’s last chance to use the UK’s veto to remove ISDS from Ceta, to protect our democracy from the corporate power-grab proposed by this deal. We urge him to do so.
Nick Dearden Director, World Development Movement, John Hilary Executive director, War on Want, Sally Hunt General secretary, University and College Union, Christine Blower General secretary, National Union of Teachers, Helen Drewery General secretary, Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Ruth Bergan Coordinator, Trade Justice Movement

• The GMB revealed at a TUC fringe meeting on Sunday that as well as TTIP (Report, 8 September) it is fighting TiSA (the global Trade in Services Agreement) and the “Trojan horse” EU-Canada Ceta. These are the final pieces in the neoliberal jigsaw, handing over control of our rights and services to the multinationals.
John Airs
Liverpool

• Despite forever banging on about the repatriation of “powers” from Europe, the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party and Ukip appears content to surrender vast swaths of UK sovereignty to multinational agribusiness, pharmaceutical and energy companies. Hypocrisy – or self-interest?
Wal Callaby
Ipswich

• Amid the furore about hacking of celebrity images, your writers (on 6 September) identify very real wider dangers in the communications revolution already spinning beyond control. Zoe Williams uses “citizen porn” examples to show how phones are now data terminals; Ian Sample explains how inequalities in wealth impact on health and our genetic futures; Charles Arthur shows how increasingly rapid and easy connection has dark downsides.

Last week I joined European doctors discussing the information sharing being pressed on them in the name of patient access but also cost efficiencies. There is no doubt that the rapidly expanding global use of so-called e-health, m-health, the cloud and all the new gadgets we may soon all have to carry to monitor our vital signs, have massive potential benefits.

But private research priorities based on profit have not necessarily addressed equitable human needs.For business knowledge is power. I refuse to allow increasingly privatised health services to access my personal data when I cannot know the purposes for which it may be used or abused. If I had secrets, for example concerning abortion or sexual health, I could be even more vulnerable to exploitation, threat, blackmail or persecution as those who had hoped their playtime images were inviolable. But I would not have access to Hollywood lawyers, and little protection for my rights.

Multinational corporations are driving this revolution, irrespective of predictable and unforeseen consequences. There is urgent need for global oversight backed by local and EU powers and rights to ensure new communications tools are harnessed for good.
Clive Needle
Director, EuroHealthNet

Wow, what a stunning Turner painting (Peace – Burial at Sea, 1842, illustrating Jonathan Jones’s review of Late Turner at Tate Britain, 9 September). Not a picture-postcard sailing ship but a proper industrial dirty-black-smoke sail/steam ship. It was painted at a time of great turbulence and poverty, which Turner’s patron George Wyndham and his associates did much to alleviate. What a shame their morality has not been handed down to present-day industrialists.

My namesake, Elizabeth Iliffe, Wyndham’s mistress and later wife, worked with Turner at Petworth House – a painter, she built a lab, made pigments, won a medal for designing a type of lever, and did horticultural experiments. Quite a good example of a scientist who remained anonymous because of her gender.
Cathryn Iliffe
Leeds

On Tuesday, Westminster politicians woke up to the fact that Scotland is very close to voting for independence. They are scrambling to throw together a plan promising new powers to the Scots to convince them to stay in the union (Brown to the rescue? No camp sends for ex-PM to save union, 9 September. Never mind that many of us have already cast our ballots in the post. And never mind that any plan so hurriedly thrown together will not fill many voters with confidence.

But supporters of the yes campaign would do well to acknowledge that the change they promise will not simply be delivered by a successful referendum. Any real change to how Scotland is governed will only be hard won, after difficult compromise and painful sacrifice. In this intense atmosphere, we might remember Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, when he offered “Change you can believe in” to a country that desperately wanted it. Hindsight, however, has not been kind to this promise. Today, the approval ratings of the president are at dismal 41% – the lowest of any US president since the 1950s. The American political system is more ideologically divided than ever.

Yet we continue to imagine that someone else can make changes for us, while we carry on comfortably as always. Whatever the result of the referendum, once all of the emotional turmoil has settled, may all of us who long for real change across Scotland and the rest of the UK finally commit to getting down to work and trying to make that change happen.
Christopher Brittain
Aberdeen

• The issue of a timetable for further powers to the Scottish parliament is secondary. The primary concern is: “what powers?” There needs to be clarity on that before the referendum date. Otherwise the Scots are being offered the same pig in the same poke as in 1979. By 19 September, the three Westminster parties, whose recent record for probity is not to be relied on, will have no need to offer any more than the lowest common denominator at best. As a Scottish voter, why should I place any faith in their offering?
James Reid
Castle Douglas

• The polls suggest that the result of next Thursday’s referendum will leave approximately half of the population of Scotland profoundly unhappy. The polls also show that many people are still not clear about the relative merits of devo max and independence. In this context it doesn’t make any sense to have a single yes/no decision-making process. What is required is an opportunity to try one of the solutions, and then choose the other if the first proves to be unsatisfactory. Coupling a timetable for extensive devolution with an undertaking to hold a further referendum in (say) 10 years would offer this option.
Stephen Gardner
Manchester

• The coalition government failed to agree to bring in proportional representation for UK voters. Had it done so, Scots anywhere in the union could have voted SNP, indeed any UK voters could have voted SNP. This would have the effect of strengthening the influence at Westminster of Scotland and Scottish ideas about social and fiscal policy. That opportunity was lost but still could still offer a compromise, post-vote, that would enfranchise the Scottish diaspora and leaven the monotony of the first-past-the-post system. The current democratic deficit lies at the root of the Scottish yearning for a more equitable voting system, and explains the lamentable turnout at elections of the nation at large.
Craig Sams
Hastings, East Sussex

• How long has Westminster known about the Scottish referendum? How long has the Labour leadership been aware of the disastrous effect on the party that a yes vote will bring? How long has it taken for Ed Miliband to show himself in Scotland? We are now seeing the no strategy panic set in. I received an email yesterday from Labour asking for donations, or for volunteers to phone Scottish party members to ask them not to vote. Talk about too little, too late. Add to this Gordon Brown being asked to play Santa Claus to tempt the voters (with the very things they were asking for prior to any talk of a referendum), plus Ed Miliband’s apparent endorsement of guards strung along the Scottish border (nice one, Ed), and you have the perfect yes-voting storm.

As an expat Scot, I don’t relish the break up of the union, but if the country of my birth wants to beat a retreat from Westminster and from the Labour party’s apparent loss of memory regarding Scotland’s unswerving support of the Labour movement since its inception, then I can live with it.
Janet Fearnley
Farnham, Surrey

• Gordon Brown acknowledges (Report, 8 September) that it is proving “difficult” to win over Scots to stay in the UK because of anger at coalition policies on austerity and privatisation. Yet in the Better Together campaign Labour is in coalition with the coalition, giving credence to the very parties that are implementing austerity.

Even worse, should Labour win the general election in 2015 it too has committed to austerity policies to eliminate the budget deficit in the lifetime of one parliament, so twice as many cuts will take place in five years compared to the past five years. If the Scots don’t want to vote for austerity, why should any Briton vote for Labour and austerity in 2015?
Darrall Cozens
Coventry

• There is one thing Gordon Brown could do to show his support for devo max. He could pledge to stand for the Scottish parliament and offer himself as leader of Scottish Labour and possible first minister. That might just be too much of a two-edged sword.
Gerard McMullan
London

• A wonderfully insightful and splendidly unforgiving piece from Owen Jones (Whatever Scots decide the old order is dead and buried, 8 September). The simple truth is that there are only 5.3 million people living in Scotland and over 56 million living in England. Scotland has 59 MPs and England 533. Even allowing for Wales’s 40 and Northern Ireland’s 18, English interests outweigh the rest – as they have done for centuries. Domination may not be as savagely exercised as it once was, but it’s ever present.

So however much Cameron, Clegg, Darling et al prattle about a better together union of equals, population and parliamentary numbers indicate that if they triumph, Scotland will revert to being an afterthought. A yes vote make sense, as the imperative of shared interests will ensure independence brings a more effective alliance between the two nations than what is presently imposed by whoever is in power in Westminster. So other than those who can’t bear to let go of what they have long held, relentlessly exploited and taken for granted, we will all be winners.
Jim Gillan
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

• I hope the Scots vote yes, because I fear the consequences for northern England should Scotland choose to stay in the union. Scotland already receives more public subsidy per head than its prosperity deserves. Promises (bribes) now being made by all major party leaders will have to be paid for. Is it likely that grandiose spending and capital schemes in the south-east, the nation’s so-called powerhouse, will be curtailed? No, the north, which contains many of the poorest areas in Britain, will pay the price.

I wish an independent Scotland every success in creating a fairer society, should it choose to go, but English people should not support any further (expensive) devolution should Scots choose to stay.
Mike Mosley
Norwich

• If bribery in the form of the belated offer of greater “devo max” doesn’t work let’s try blackmail. Shares set to slump on independence (Report, 8 September), homeowners at risk of a price crash, crisis worse than eurozone if Scotland votes yes. Some extracts from recent press. I hope my fellow Scots won’t let these shoddy tactics dissuade them from voting yes.
Dugald MacInnes
London

• Please do not separate Scotland from England. For us, Scotland and England are one. Both Scotland and England will suffer economically. When nations in Europe are banding together to make a bigger market, separation will reduce both economically and politically. Logistically there will be problems. It is a bit late don’t you think after 300 years? If you want to protect certain things you can negotiate for autonomy in certain areas. Don’t say yes to independence.
Dr S Sudarshan
Bangalore, India

Many, like Sir John Major, are describing the union as “long-standing and successful”, with this is as one reason to maintain it. I am sure it is right to take a long view. That way, looking at Europe’s geopolitical map over centuries, a historian can see how much units of government have changed, as regions have come together and sometimes divided. The picture’s complex. I can’t think of a modern European state in which its “union” hasn’t involved issues regarding the “centre” and the “parts”. Is it surprising that in our time these issues are resurfacing? Should we not see the Scotland/UK agenda as a particular case of this?

There seems no reason for the United Kingdom to stay the same just because we may say it’s been successful, something founded, I think, largely on the shared opportunities and gains from empire through much of the time. But a larger view may also say that the way forward isn’t to break the multiple bonds established over time (I write as an English person who, like so many, is part Scot). It is to recognise on the one hand that there is a real and urgent need to change relationships within the UK, not just regarding Scotland; on the other hand that separation is not now a good way to go about it.

After a yes vote for independence, the issues of relationship will still be there – especially in the economic sphere. What our times need is recognition of interdependence, surely, and more mature exploration of how that is brought together with regard for the identity of peoples, places and interests within the larger frame. Don’t we need this larger view from our politicians? It’s about an endeavour based not on argument from the past but a positive view for people and states in changing times.
Rev Dr Brian Curnew
London

• As a new Scottish Enlightenment brings the mythology surrounding Britain and its empire crashing down around the feet of the Tories, let us remember that the local name for the despised British in colonial north America was Tory. If we add the words penned by Thomas Jefferson in the opening paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence in 1776, there is every reason to believe the same act of self-determination will liberate the real potential of Scotland: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station.”
Miles Secker
Heckington, Lincolnshire

• People living in Scotland (of whom almost 10% were born in England) have followed the debates and discussions for months now and know that no concept of rejecting Britishness has ever entered into their thoughts. However, for people to be able to elect their own government and prosper as their Scandinavian neighbours do with a fairer distribution of wealth does involve rejection of an outdated British political model. People in Newcastle and Manchester know this but sadly they don’t have Scotland’s opportunities – as yet.
Stuart Campbell
Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway

• I am a naturalised Briton who has travelled widely and frequently in Scotland. I have always regarded Scotland as a separate nation and am surprised that its independence was not confirmed decades ago. So far as I can see, the principal argument employed by the no camp in England is that a yes vote would bring adverse results for England and the English. This is an argument which Scots can be excused for finding less than compelling. I have often been told by friends that I may be British but (they are relieved to say) I can never be English. I rather look forward to proving them wrong.
David Rubinstein
York

• I have lived in England for years, but was brought up and educated in Scotland, support the Scottish national football team and still have a Scottish accent. I consider myself to be Scottish.

However, unlike unlike many expat Scots who presumably could, if they wished, claim Scottish nationality based on birth, I was born in England. I still have family in Scotland: my English-born parents have lived there since they first moved north in 1963 with a very young family, and could presumably claim nationality through residency. I have a sibling who will be able to claim Scottish nationality by birth. I know my circumstances don’t apply to many people but those of us who are affected will effectively be stripped of what we believed to be our nationality if Scotland votes yes. I like being Scottish and British. After next Thursday I may well loose the former.
Mark Jackson
Harrow, Middlesex

• A BBC report stated there are some 750.000 Scottish-born people living south of the border. This is more than the population of Edinburgh or Glasgow. We hear about numerous surveys being conducted. Has anybody bothered to ask these Scots their opinions concerning the upcoming vote on independence? What about their heritage?
Justin Brown
Sherborne, Dorset

• It’s absurd to suggest that people living outside Scotland should have a vote in the referendum. If you had once lived in, say, Macclesfield, and later moved to, say, Mitcham, would you feel entitled to vote in Macclesfield elections?
Douglas Graham
Hamilton, South Lanarkshire

• I was born in England but, during the war, I served in a Scottish regiiment for over four years. If Scotland gains independence, will I be able to claim dual nationality. What would be the advantages? And the cost?
Ron Cox
Croydon

• With the momentum now swinging in favour of the yes campaign, there must be a duty on the prime minster and his colleagues to seek agreement on the make-up of the new union flag as the saltire is removed on independence. This is not a flippant comment. Many Commonwealth countries and dependences have the present union flag as part of their own. Surely there is a duty also to discuss with them the future design of the new union flag?
Colin Cameron
Irvine, Ayrshire

• Just to reassure Charlie Brooker (G2, 9 September) and anybody else who is worried about it: the union flag will remain the same even if Scotland chooses independence. It dates from the reign of James VI of Scotland/James I of England, over a century before the 1707 parliamentary union, and ingeniously represents separate countries sharing the same monarch. The flag will only have to be changed if Scotland makes the mistake of becoming a republic, in which case they will also have to elect dreary bourgeois presidents instead of enjoying our glamorous royal family.
Ralph Lloyd-Jones
Nottingham

Why do planning departments persist in demanding that a house is built of brick to ‘fit in with the neighbours’?

Sir, You highlight (Business, Sept 11) the current shortage of bricklayers. As an architect I have often advised clients that their new house or extension could be designed to avoid the extra costs of labour and materials that are in short supply, and generally they have been keen to accept this idea. Unfortunately many planning departments are oblivious of the pressures on the building industry and insist that a house is built of brick to “fit in with the neighbours”.

This attitude is no longer fit for purpose and I am increasingly taking the view that local planning departments are the greatest obstacle to increasing the supply of housing.

John T Pounder

London SE5

Humans, rather than badgers, are responsible for the disappearance of hedgehogs in Britain

Sir, Clive Aslet (Sept 9) implies that the decline of hedgehogs has been caused by badgers. In fact hedgehogs are disappearing mainly because of man. Modern landscaping and concreting over gardens, slug pellets, pesticides, solid fences, bonfires, modern farming methods and road kill are to blame. Unless we start taking responsibility for this, our hedgehogs could be heading for extinction.

Valerie Russell

Tonbridge, Kent

Sir, Further to Dr Sir Christopher Lever’s letter (Sept 10), baby birds in the nest and immature fledglings are no match for magpies and sparrowhawks. These are their main supply of food, not the speedier, lighter parent birds.

Sally Blundell

Martley, Worcs

Why do planning departments persist in demanding that a house is built of brick to ‘fit in with the neighbours’?

Sir, You highlight (Business, Sept 11) the current shortage of bricklayers. As an architect I have often advised clients that their new house or extension could be designed to avoid the extra costs of labour and materials that are in short supply, and generally they have been keen to accept this idea. Unfortunately many planning departments are oblivious of the pressures on the building industry and insist that a house is built of brick to “fit in with the neighbours”.

This attitude is no longer fit for purpose and I am increasingly taking the view that local planning departments are the greatest obstacle to increasing the supply of housing.

John T Pounder

London SE5

What on earth does the Imperial War Museum mean by saying its exhibits ‘speak to each other’?

Sir, Janice Turner (Sept 11) is right about the labelling at the Imperial War Museum. My son, aged 12, is a history fanatic and badgered me for months to go there. To find that we had to skulk around to find out what everything was, in a very crowded museum, was very frustrating.

To now learn that the exhibits “speak to each other” makes me wonder what language they were speaking in. Has the written word gone the same way as the typewriter ?

Brian Kettell

Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

It is not just overweight people who can feel discriminated against — virtual strangers comment on my build

Sir, I do not doubt that overweight people feel discriminated against (Sept 11). I would never make a hurtful comment to somebody about their size but find it odd that people seem to think it is acceptable to comment to my face on my very slim build by calling me “skinny” or “anorexic”.

Slim Jims also have feelings.

Catrin Board

Shorne, Kent

The reports from the Times Archive reveal that ‘there was no William Howard Russell of the Great War’

Sir, Nothing could illustrate more clearly the paucity of news from the front during one of the largest battles in human history — the Battle of the Marne — than the extract on needle-work from the Times Archive (Sept 9). And yet only days before, in the Amiens Dispatch (Aug 29), Times readers had learnt of the “broken bits of many regiments” reeling back in the retreat.

There was no William Howard Russell of the First World War.

Antony Bird

Chichester

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