Marie Dubois in La Ronde, 1964 Photo: Photoshot/Collection Christophel

Marie Dubois, who has died aged 77, was an actress whose air of vulnerability diluted the ennui of the French New Wave; she appeared in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Une femme est une femme (1961), and became an unwitting pawn in the power play between the two rival directors.

Her debut, in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960), was to set the tenor of her career. As Léna, the orphan waitress who is hopelessly in love with the titular bar pianist (played by Charles Aznavour), she exudes both sensitivity and stability. Truffaut called the character “the girl with whom one could make a fresh start”. It is not to be — Lena is gunned down by gangsters.

Marie Dubois’s air of innocence, blue eyes and gentle smile were to make her a natural choice for casting agents looking for the embodiment of a fragile woman. It was a fitting observation: while filming Shoot the Piano Player, Marie Dubois experienced the first faint symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a condition that she would battle for the rest of her life.

Truffaut became her mentor during the shoot. He suggested that she adopt a screen name (she was born Claudine Huzé), settling on Marie Dubois after the title of a 1952 novel by Jacques Audiberti. Marie Dubois later claimed that she and Truffaut had fallen in love while filming Shoot the Pianist but that the relationship had always remained platonic. At the time of the shoot Truffaut was married and already had a mistress, the actress Liliane David.

Jean-Luc Godard, however, swiftly took advantage of the situation. “You’ve been acting like a s—,” wrote Truffaut in a letter to Godard. “I knew you had seduced Liliane by telling her ‘Francois doesn’t love you any more, he’s in love with Marie Dubois who’s in his new film,’ and I found that pitiful.” Meanwhile Godard noted: “Every day the women we sleep with separate us more than they bring us together.” Despite the rumours and love spats, Marie Dubois and Truffaut remained friends until the director’s death in 1984.

Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé was born on January 12 1937 in Paris and studied at L’École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre (ENSATT). She began her career on stage, appearing in Molière’s The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Truffaut spotted her in the 1959 television series La Caméra explore le temps (“The Camera Explores Time”) and invited her to a screen test. “Imagine you’re a really vulgar fruit peddler,” she was told by the man behind the camera. “Curse me out.” She screwed up her nose: “I’m so embarrassed. It’s awful.”

^{Marie Dubois with Oskar Werner in Jules et Jim, 1962}

Two years after the success of Shoot the Pianist she worked with Truffaut again, on his love-triangle drama Jules et Jim (1962). Playing Thérèse, the anarchic ex-girlfriend of Jules (played by Oskar Werner), she was responsible for one of the film’s most memorable scenes, in which she mimics a steam engine by smoking a cigarette back to front, puffing away on the lit end. In 1961 (the year she took a cameo part in Godard’s Une femme est une femme) Marie Dubois had married the actor Serge Rousseau, another good friend of Truffaut, who would later became an actors’ agent .

Although Marie Dubois worked primarily in supporting roles, her range was broad. She gave the angst of the New Wave milieu a tender heart, working under the direction of Alain Resnais, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim in addition to Godard and Truffaut; but she embraced slapstick comedy and Gallic noir with equal enthusiasm.

Comedies brought her to an international audience. She was the female lead in the wartime farce La Grande Vadrouille (“The Big Runaround”, 1966) which is one of France’s most popular films and appeared in the English language car race caper Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969). In both films she starred opposite Terry-Thomas.

Thrillers, however, provided some of her best parts. In 1978 she played the ill-fated lover of Yves Montand’s chancer in Alain Corneau’s La Menace. The performance won her the best supporting actress award at the 1978 Césars (the French Oscars).

When film roles were sparse she turned to television , much to the disapproval of Truffaut. “I’ve always felt an actor should do television only if he’s forced to,” he said to Serge, advising that his wife would be better occupied writing her memoirs: “Marie will have to learn to be philosophical about those periods when she is ‘resting’.”

In later life Marie Dubois campaigned for awareness of, and care for, people suffering from multiple sclerosis. “I was born in the cinema at the very same time that a little death crept inside me: multiple sclerosis,” she wrote in her memoirs. “The first time it’s like a fleeting shadow glimpsed in the night and that dissipates in daylight. Hardly disturbing. Then, little by little, it began appearing in the light. The shadow took shape. And that shape was my own.”

As her illness worsened, her film appearances became less frequent, although she continued to take small parts during the 1980s and 1990s, most notably in Alain Resnais’s Mon Oncle d’Amérique (1980) and Francis Girod’s Descent into Hell (1986). The latter earned her another César nomination.

She was made a Chevalier de la légion d’honneur in 2002 and an Officier in 2013. Her autobiography, J’ai Pas Menti, J’ai Pas Tout Dit (“I Didn’t Lie, I Didn’t Tell Everything”), was published in 2002.

Serge Rousseau died in 2007, and Marie Dubois is survived by their daughter, the actress Dominique Rousseau.

Marie Dubois, born January 12 1937, died October 15 2014

When telling the 12th-century legend of the Green Children of Woolpit to primary pupils in Wiltshire, I explained how the adults of Woolpit were frightened when the green children were discovered, but not the children. “I suppose it’s a bit like Ukip,” commented one pupil. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
Roger Day, storyteller
Wedhampton, Wiltshire

• I believe the Isle of Wight shares with Cumbria the extremely dubious distinction of being an English county that has never had a female MP (There’s a new Sherriff in town, 28 October). Or did I sleep through the independence vote?
Justine Andrews
Ryde, Isle of Wight

• Please could we have Michael Meacher (People need hope, not the Tory austerity tale, Letters, 28 October) for the leader of the Scottish Labour party?
Robert Leach
Selkirk, Scottish Borders

• “Fat idiots are still idiots even when they’re skinny,” writes Stuart Heritage (G2, 28 October) about three public figures who have done nothing more reprehensible than lose weight. Does the Guardian believe that if trolling is done in public, it’s free speech?
Stephen Sedley
Oxford

• A traditional English folk song suggests curly kale (Letters, passim) was once a staple of the labouring classes:
Ale, ale, glorious ale; dressed up in pewter it tells its own tale. / Some folks likes radishes, some curly kale, / But give I fried onions and a girt dish o’ taters / And a lump of fatty bacon and a pint of good ale.
Ian Thompson
Hinton Parva, Wiltshire

• The dispersal of the remains of the Berlin Wall was certain fast and furious (Report, 28 October).  I remember, only the day after, being offered a choice of pieces of brick and concrete during a lunchtime pint in Bold Street, Liverpool, just round the corner from some demolished flats.
John Boothby
Warrington

When telling the 12th-century legend of the Green Children of Woolpit to primary pupils in Wiltshire, I explained how the adults of Woolpit were frightened when the green children were discovered, but not the children. “I suppose it’s a bit like Ukip,” commented one pupil. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
Roger Day, storyteller
Wedhampton, Wiltshire

• I believe the Isle of Wight shares with Cumbria the extremely dubious distinction of being an English county that has never had a female MP (There’s a new Sherriff in town, 28 October). Or did I sleep through the independence vote?
Justine Andrews
Ryde, Isle of Wight

• Please could we have Michael Meacher (People need hope, not the Tory austerity tale, Letters, 28 October) for the leader of the Scottish Labour party?
Robert Leach
Selkirk, Scottish Borders

• “Fat idiots are still idiots even when they’re skinny,” writes Stuart Heritage (G2, 28 October) about three public figures who have done nothing more reprehensible than lose weight. Does the Guardian believe that if trolling is done in public, it’s free speech?
Stephen Sedley
Oxford

• A traditional English folk song suggests curly kale (Letters, passim) was once a staple of the labouring classes:
Ale, ale, glorious ale; dressed up in pewter it tells its own tale. / Some folks likes radishes, some curly kale, / But give I fried onions and a girt dish o’ taters / And a lump of fatty bacon and a pint of good ale.
Ian Thompson
Hinton Parva, Wiltshire

• The dispersal of the remains of the Berlin Wall was certain fast and furious (Report, 28 October).  I remember, only the day after, being offered a choice of pieces of brick and concrete during a lunchtime pint in Bold Street, Liverpool, just round the corner from some demolished flats.
John Boothby
Warrington

Your correspondent Pauline Eyre gives the impression of being very determined not to enjoy Grayson Perry’s exhibition The Vanity of Small Differences at Temple Newsam (Letters, 23 October). This is a pity for her, as it is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking shows I have seen for a long time. Bringing it to the country-house museum was a brave and risky decision by the curators and authorities, who – as I could see on my visits – have done everything they can to make it as accessible as possible to everyone, including wheelchair users.

The fact is that Pauline Eyre herself took the decision not to make use of the stair-climber, to refuse kindly help from the trained staff, and objected to waiting for the passenger lift.

In her online letter she described Temple Newsam as “a minor stately home … a bastion of high culture … with poky bedrooms stuffed with furniture and decorative objects belonging to assorted lives from long ago”. This is not only incorrect but frankly insulting to the people of Leeds, who take enormous pride and greatly enjoy this unique country-house art museum. It is one of only two four-star museums in Yorkshire listed by Mark Fisher, former Labour minister for the arts, in his Britain’s Best Museums and Galleries (2004). He described it as “the north’s best kept secret”, and its collections “a triumph”.
James Lomax
Chairman, Leeds Art Fund

What Polly Toynbee didn’t say (This war on windfarms is the Tories’ latest sop to Ukip, 28 October) was that two weeks ago wind generated 25% of Britain’s power. What we should be doing is growing our own indigenous wind turbine industry, as at the moment we import them from mainly Germany and Denmark. A British wind turbine industry would generate much-needed skilled jobs in manufacturing, and improve our balance of payments too.

Britain could be self-sufficient in cheap energy, as we are surrounded by the sea and wind; the risk of being reliant on imported, expensive fossil fuels would be eliminated, with lower industrial costs making us able to export cheaply. As lower electricity costs were passed on to the consumer, this would boost the economy, as people didn’t have to worry about the “second mortgage” that has become the energy price rip-off. Government could legislate that all newbuild housing should have solar panels as standard.

Are we really saying that the country that invented radar, television, antibiotics and the jet engine, among other things – the country of Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee and Peter Higgs – cannot grasp the nettle of a new age of affordable, clean energy?

It was once said that the trade unions were luddites for not embracing change; today the real luddites are Eric Pickles, Nigel Farage and the rest of the Tory and Ukip parties.
Alan Quinn
Prestwich, Manchester

• Maybe reactionary populism works by threes. In the US to be a true Republican (as defined by the Tea Party) is to be against gun control, against abortion and against “the climate change lobby”. And, as Polly Toynbee notes, to be a true Tory (as defined by Ukip) is to be against Europe, against immigration and against windfarms.

In fact Ukip has been at the forefront of many local campaigns against wind energy, including the offshore Atlantic Array, but not on the Somerset levels. The campaign against the Ecotricity proposals that Toynbee speaks of has been led by the Huntspill Windfarm Action Group.

Rather than condemn such groups, it is vital to understand the real sense of fear and loss that often underlies what we might otherwise too easily dismiss as nimbyism. For it is the same fear and loss that fuels anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment. The need to cling to the idea of a timeless British (physical and social) landscape has been a recurring theme of Toryism, and it is this that Ukip now threatens to capture from the Conservatives.
Paul Hoggett
Chair, Climate Psychology Alliance

• Yes, windfarms are political but Polly Toynbee shouldn’t link all opposition to windfarms with climate-change denials. Wind turbines in the right place are a useful part of a mixed energy policy, even though wind power is not particularly clean or cheap once all construction, standby and transmission factors are considered.

There are other reasons for opposing windfarms. They are on an industrial scale, but built mostly in rural areas, and they create only a tiny number of rural jobs. The real money goes to the developer and the (often rich) landowner, paid by customers (including the poor) via subsidies on their energy bills. Whatever Mr Pickles’ reason for calling in appeals, at least it means MPs and councils are now beginning to listen to local opposition.

Come to Northumberland or east Yorkshire and see the damage done to the landscape there, and listen to the outcry from residents, left and right.
Mike Padgett
Sancton, Yorkshire

I don’t like the money spent on public inquiries. However, having just watched the BBC documentary on the untold story surrounding the appalling death of Peter Connolly (Watch this, G2, 27 October), the public needs to understand just how brutal and manipulative are the attempts to scapegoat social workers for our endemic social problems. In this case there was an orchestrated campaign by the Sun (under Rebekah Brooks) to target the social workers and locum doctor involved in the case, all quickly themselves becoming the tragic victims of a contemporary witch-hunt.

The evil resulting from this is that the strain on all the services involved escapes attention, as those with a huge burden of work in the frontline of patching up society’s ills are punished rather than supported. The performance of David Cameron in making political capital out of the tragedy (at the time briefed by his “political adviser” Andy Coulson) was hugely significant in this modern tragedy, as were the panicked reactions of Ed Balls and the rushed report of Ofsted. After this disgraceful farce of wrongful blame (the spokespeople for the police and the NHS happy to tolerate, if not encourage, the misleading targeting of the social workers), the right questions are still being ignored.

How better to support our frontline social workers is the issue. Even as the brave and compassionate Sharon Shoesmith kept trying to talk about what was needed to protect children (and damaged mothers) on Newsnight, Evan Davis continued with the lazy routine of personal blame. Given there was never even an inquest into Peter’s death, a public inquiry might at least make more people aware of the evils of these bullying diversions, perhaps as well highlighting how much more vulnerable professional women are to being scapegoated than men in similar positions of responsibility. There are so many social, political and ethical issues here, which a public inquiry might begin to flush out.
Professor Lynne Segal
Birkbeck College, University of London

There are indeed lessons to be drawn for HS2 and HS3 from the report on the TGV in France by the French audit office (France’s ‘incoherent’ TGV network fails to live up to high-speed promise, 27 October). The report has been used to suggest that the TGV network is “running out of steam”. The report appears to justify this opinion by presenting a headline statistic that states that 40% of journey times on TGVs are spent on non-high-speed routes. The strength of high-speed trains is to cover distance. Given that the average speed of a TGV on a high-speed line is nearly three times that on a conventional route, the distance travelled on conventional lines is only around 10% or 15% of the total distance travelled. Lesson one – beware the misuse of numbers to support a politically motivated argument.

The network of services provided by TGV trains is very extensive – it serves 230 destinations, despite the fact that there are only five high-speed routes. That is its strength – it offers a network of services between all major French cities and most of the country’s rail-served towns. It does this by trains that serve a small number of major centres and then run seamlessly on to conventional lines, something that will not be achieved by the dead-end terminal stations proposed for HS2 in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The adoption of terminal stations will reduce the frequency of services between individual pairs of cities. It will also waste capacity on the high-speed line because of the need to provide separate medium-distance point-to-point services, such as Birmingham to Manchester. Lesson two – high-speed lines must be designed to allow the operation of frequent, regular-interval train services that are fully integrated into public transport networks, and not just to provide point-to-point services like an airline.
Greg Haigh
Dorking, Surrey

I am horrified to read that our government will no longer support search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, claiming that rescue missions “simply encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing” (UK accused over migrant rescue plan, 28 October). Have we lost our sense of common humanity? Are we to isolate ourselves to such an extent that we are unable or unwilling to reach out to our fellow human beings? These people find themselves in such dire difficulties that they see no choice but to take to the high seas and risk their lives in vessels that are woefully inadequate. Let us not forget that our government acts in our name and that each of us is implicated in this act of barbaric selfishness.
Anish Kapoor
London

• Perhaps there is a link between ministers’ plan to let people drown, on the basis that rescuing them only encourages others, and government benefits policy, as outlined in Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (Today’s Britain: where the poor are forced to steal or beg from food banks, 28 October), illustrating how the government let people drown in their poverty on the basis that this callousness is some kind of disincentive to joblessness and a spur to others to find work.

These two articles illustrate that the same repugnant casual disregard for human lives pervades government policy, whether it is benefits claimants, the working poor, the environment, or desperate migrants: literally, sink or swim.
Miles Halpin
Wirksworth, Derbyshire

• Tuesday’s Guardian front page was inspiring, with the story about Dean Balboa Farley running into the prime minister (Police under fire after PM hit by jogger, 28 October) appearing under the one about the government’s refusal to support a Mediterranean rescue mission. I was happy to imagine that Mr Farley was seeking to make a citizen’s arrest of David Cameron for bringing the UK into disrepute, rather than jogging to the gym.
Jan Dubé
Peebles, Scottish Borders

• According to the Home Office, rescuing migrants from boats in the Mediterranean acts as a “pull factor” in encouraging more people to try this desperate route. I’m surprised they haven’t followed their own logic, and employed the Royal Navy to sail around the Med sinking migrants’ boats: that would certainly reduce the flow of would-be migrants.

Oh dear, I’m not sure I should have suggested that, as there must be people in the government who would actually think this a serious suggestion, worth following up.
Dr Richard Carter
London

• I expect soon to see the disbanding of the ambulance services sent to crash scenes, the cancellation of mountain rescue teams, and the banning of first-aid teams at football matches, all of which have the deplorable “pull factor” of encouraging people to crash their cars into each other, stand under avalanches, and break their own legs playing football.
Karl Sabbagh
Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire

• Saving people’s lives sends out the wrong message? Did someone turn the lights of civilisation out?
Stefan Wickham
Oxted, Surrey

• So, our government thinks that allowing a few hundred more fleeing migrants to drown will act as a deterrent to others following. We’re an island nation with an absolute duty to “those in peril on the sea”. I am ashamed to be British.
Ken Cordingley
Williton, Somerset

• I shouldn’t be surprised. The government’s refusal to support search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean because they encourage refugees to risk their lives is consistent with all its other welfare policies: benefits discourage the disabled from getting out of their wheelchairs and so on.

But the callous ignorance of this “quietly announced” decision fills me with anger. Why does the government think that the number of people attempting this desperate and expensive voyage has doubled to more than 160,000 in the first nine months of this year? No doubt the 90,000 that have been fished out of the water by the Italian government’s Mare Nostrum operation so far this year embarked on their crossing happy in the knowledge they’d be rescued when their ramshackle crafts sank. Those 500, many children among them, who were recently murdered by people smugglers when they refused to transfer to an unseaworthy vessel were just the unlucky few, mere drops in the ocean.

The doubling of numbers fleeing Syria, Gaza, Somalia, Libya and other devastated countries of the region is because these people have lost their homes, their jobs, their families. The politics of these upheavals is complex, but for Britain to wash its hands of a situation for which it bears some responsibility is squalid. I look forward, without much hope, to Labour and the Lib Dems challenging and denouncing this cold-blooded decision.
Rod Edmond
Deal, Kent

As a result of Park Honan’s inspirational teaching of American literature, I went to the University of Sussex to do a Master’s in American studies.

I still have vivid memories of Honan’s lecture on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, delivered in the style of a Hollywood film producer assessing the possibilities of making a film of the novel. It was a brilliant performance, and one that truly engaged his students.

In seminars, he had the happy knack of allowing the conversation to ramble along, and then, with one or two adroit interventions, lifting the understanding to a more fulfilling level.

For some reason he would often turn to me when the discussion was flagging, and in the kindest tone say: “Well, Turner, what d’you think?” Eventually I would ready myself for his question, the result being I became better prepared for his seminars than I might have been.

To me, he was a breath of fresh air in the lecture hall, and there was always intellectual rigour in seminar and tutorial. What a combination!

I feel very privileged to have been taught by him.

Britain’s role in Europe

José Manuel Barroso’s comments on the UK’s relationship with the EU highlight the longstanding contradiction in English attitudes to its neighbours (24 October). On the one hand, it is not all right for Brussels to maintain collective jurisdiction over British affairs, but it is all right for London to maintain collective jurisdiction over Scottish affairs. The clamour south of the border to keep the union shortly before the Scottish referendum stands in sharp contrast to the will to respect the other union we have, with Europe.

When you join a club, you expect to respect commonly accepted rules. This is true for Britain in the EU now, as it was in 1707 when Scotland joined England and Wales.

If Westminster wants power to return to Britain, then it is perfectly logical for Scots to want power to return to Scotland. I am not sure that has been perfectly understood south of the border.
Trevor Rigg
Edinburgh, UK

• Not so long ago, a local was complaining to me about so-called immigrants who had come to take advantage of the host country’s generous benefits. There were so many of them, she complained, that their foreign-language dominated conversations in the school playground.

The complainant was French, the so-called immigrants British. I’m not sure that David Cameron has thought through all the consequences of his latest knee-jerk reaction to Ukip.
Simon Coates
Brussels, Belgium

• When David Cameron claims that he can renegotiate the rules regarding European immigration, a representative of the EU asserts that the free movement of labour is an integral part of the Common Market. And that is the whole trouble, and I wouldn’t bet on Cameron being able to change it. But it is nonsense.

The free movement of tomatoes and washing machines across European borders is one thing: they are merely commodities to be bought and sold. The free movement of labour is a qualitatively different thing. People have families and relationships; they need somewhere to live; they travel; they need access to doctors and hospitals; their children need schools.

We already have a home-grown baby boom to cope with, but in addition we have thousands of people arriving every year from abroad, mostly from Europe, whose needs have to be met as well. It cannot go on.

No wonder Nigel Farage and Ukip are raking in the votes. It is not about keeping out the foreigners; it is not racism or any other form of discrimination. It is simply about the number of people on a small island and the rate at which we can absorb and provide for more. It has to slow down or stop.
Martin Down
Witney, UK

• Regarding Jonathan Freedland’s piece on Dad’s Army (17 October): Nigel Farage evokes a bygone Britain that would have been instantly recognisable to William Faulkner. In writing stories of the defeated south, he used to comment, “The past is present.”

Growing up in California, land of the future, I never understood this until my visiting southern aunt “explained” sotto voce that the family lost their money a century ago “after buying Confederate bonds”: this turned out to be rubbish, but so much more entertaining – and enduring– than the truth. I hope events will prove us able to forget Farage as a flash in the pan. Meanwhile, how about a Steve Bell cartoon? You know, with pan.
Linda Agerbak
Arlington, Massachusetts, US

• Jonathan Freedland wheels out “the foundation stone of British Euroscepticism”, ie “that memory of standing alone against the Nazi menace”. May I remind him and lots of other Brits that there was a second army, the Brits’ first non-empire allies: namely, the Polish army that had regrouped in Scotland after defeat in Poland and being let down in France? My father was a captain in that army. After D-day they landed along with the Canadians and made their way to Bremerhaven. The officers were advised not to go back to Poland after the war, which accounts, incidentally, for my birth in Glasgow, along with other Scottish/Polish kids.
Richard Duda
Villers-les-Nancy, France

IMF and global recovery

So, according to the IMF, recovery is being driven by the US and the UK (17 October). Pity that the facing page informs us that real earnings of British workers have decreased for seven years in a row (Pay squeeze worst since Victorian age). Am I missing something? Or is this an accurate definition of the IMF’s priorities?
Giorgio Ranalli
Ottawa, Canada

No wonder that global economic growth may never recover to pre-crisis levels, as warned by the IMF. The crisis was caused by our living beyond our means, spending, not investing, with banks and others looking for borrowers only to increase levels of personal debt.
Adrian Betham
London, UK

The real risk of Ebola

Not to sound hysterical, but am I the only person seeing a huge disconnect between the headline Ebola spreads a global warning (10 October) and the subheading Experts say flu outbreak would pose a bigger risk, accompanied by a photograph of health workers in full Hazmat gear?

If the disease is less difficult to contract than the flu, I should have thought that rubber gloves and a surgical face mask would be enough protection. But then in the same Guardian issue we are told there are five Ebola cases every hour in Sierra Leone, with a prediction of 10 per hour before the end of October. Doesn’t sound like a low-level risk to me.
Rhona Davies
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada

Which American values?

Regarding the situation in northern Iraq-Syria, the patent failure of the war the US started in 2003 is more obvious than ever. But after the policies that brought such destabilisation and mayhem, the US has some responsibilities there and cannot simply turn its back and look away from the barbaric (or any other adjective) deeds committed by Isis.

By the way, I haven’t read anything lately about Guantánamo. Yes, remember those 130 or so prisoners still held captive, some for more than 12 years, without trial or even charges and force fed when on hunger strike? A really barbaric (or any adjective you prefer) situation indeed. In his speeches, Barack Obama always refers to the “American values” and “who we are”. Really, by releasing at last the Guantánamo prisoners, the US Congress would show more against barbarism than air strikes which, when they kill five jihadis, 50 new fighters are sent in (17 October).
Marc Jachym
Les Ulis, France

Threats to the planet

Even if leaders from every nation united and built a space-age defence system that could protect every city on Earth from a meteorite impact, it would only highlight how complacent they’ve been about tackling threats to life on this planet (17 October). Asteroid impacts are rare and inevitable, as Peter Jenniskens points out; on the other hand, taking steps to protect humans from each other, and the planet from humans, is a realistic and necessary goal.

The world’s leaders cannot seem to deal with reality or necessity very well, though. I suspect that’s because doing so would require them to be realistic about the impact of their own ambitions, which are a far greater threat to human survival than any meteorite could be.
A Elliott
Berlin, Germany

Briefly

• As a CNES project scientist, I was very pleased to read the short science article (17 October) entitled Satellite map of sea floor. However, as specified in the acknowledgments of the original Science article, two satellite altimeter missions were used to enhance the new sea floor maps: CryoSat-2 data was provided by the European Space Agency, and Jason-1 data by Nasa and the French space agency, CNES.

Indeed, on the CNES side, we worked very hard with all of the different scientific communities to find an orbit that provided excellent new observations of the sea floor, and continued to make regular observations of the ocean dynamics. So it was a bit galling that our long partnership with Nasa for the Jason series was not correctly specified.
Rosemary Morrow
Toulouse, France

• Referring to the “state-owned” SaskPower International is wrong (10 October), as in Canada we do not have “states”. It should have read “provincial/government owned”, as we have provinces in this country.
Janet Downey
Manotick, Ontario, Canada

• I enjoy my Guardian Weekly, not least because of its careful political correctness. So you will understand my dismay to read Stephen Moss’s glorification of the Dull Men’s Club (10 October). He missed the big story and entirely ignored the tough questions: are women members permitted? Is there a Ladies Auxiliary? When will the name be changed to The Dull Persons Club? Seems this article slipped through the Guardian’s PC screen.
Bob Walsh
Wilton, Connecticut, US

Sir, Bravo to you for allowing Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams, a brave man indeed, to reveal the tactical military and political mistakes made in Helmand as well as the systemic failures of our command system (“Our failure in Afghanistan must be exposed”, Oct 28). If one adds to this the political and military factors prevalent when intervention was decided upon, such as the personal nature of political decision-making, the internal military tensions, the failure to observe the historical lessons of intervention in Afghanistan — which surely the Foreign Office was pressing at the time — and the absence of an exit strategy, then Lt-Col Williams’ calls for a Chilcot-type investigation need to be heeded. Of course they won’t be.
Evan Davies
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan

Sir, We do not need a Chilcot-style inquiry to reflect that history and geography predicts that military conquest of Afghanistan is impossible. The real lesson that can be learnt from our latest attempt to defy the odds is that political, economic and social progress will be achieved only through education. Educational opportunity should be the legacy which we must continue to support and protect through aid. Without military intervention this would not be possible, and it was not in vain.
Bernard Kingston
Biddenden, Kent

Sir, After the Afghanistan retreat there remains one sublime reason for eternal pride. It is the courage and tenacity shown by small units occupying isolated outposts. The gallantry and sacrifice was such that not one forward operating base was overrun. Those soldiers fought on two fronts, against the Taliban and against the politicians at home. History will record admiration for those heroes at the sharp end. The names of their deluded “leadership” will reek in ignominy.
Hugh Charles Jones
Dinas Cross, Pembrokeshire

Sir, It beggars belief that we can spend nearly £40 billion on a futile campaign in Afghanistan (yet again) but cannot leave any kind of memorial to the brave fallen. Was there ever a more pointless or ill thought out campaign in British military history?
Andrew Livesey
Latimer, Bucks

Sir, To say that we failed in Afghanistan and that the loss of lives was futile is not really the point. We saw a great evil — the Taliban — and all they were doing, and we tried to do something about it. The alternative was to do nothing, which is not really an option. When will we realise that success and failure are not the opposite sides of a great divide, not sharply defined? For those who lost the people they loved, the idea that the campaign was all in vain must be unbearable. To try and then to fail is not a failure. To be afraid of failure and therefore not to try at all: now that really is failure.
Robin Stemp
Cambridge

Sir, Predictions that the Ministry of Defence could face 7.5 per cent cuts in its funding will be of concern to service personnel and their families. The army is emerging from a four-year redundancy programme and soldiers continue to have reduced income after years of pay restraint. The mood across forces’ families is low — we are not unscathed.

Previous defence cuts were made in an era of the planned exit from Afghanistan and claims that “there is no appetite for war”, but the emergence of Isis, developments in eastern Europe and the use of troops to deal with ebola demonstrate the need for a strong and agile defence force. There is no room for further cuts if we are to retain and recruit our soldiers and the families who support them.
Catherine Spencer
Chief executive, Army Families Federation

Sir, Your picture of the Bush family (Times2, Oct 28) reminded me of how well Stephen Sondheim summed up vast presidential families in Merrily We Roll Along. On stage is a similar line-up, this time of the Kennedys, and the song includes, “. . . Till half of the nation’s / made up of relations / of Bobby and Jackie and Jack / And Ethel and Ted and Eunice and Pat and Joan / And Steve and Peter and Jean and Sarge / And Joe and Rose and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows . . .”.
David Simons
Bakewell, Derbyshire

Sir, We represent 30 leading manufacturers and together we employ nearly 45,000 people. This is the first time that we — as a group — have commented publicly on the need to develop shale gas in the northwest of England. We believe that exploiting the potential of this new energy is vital for Britain.

More than 800,000 people work in energy-intensive industries and their supply chains, contributing £95 billion to the UK economy. These businesses are the bedrock of our manufacturing sector. Taking advantage of shale gas is particularly critical for the northwest of England, which stands to gain the most from a thriving onshore energy industry.

Exploiting shale could lead to cheaper gas prices or at least stabilise costs for business. We call on all mainstream party leaders to put aside politics and support the extraction of natural gas from Lancashire shale.

Janet Thornton, Managing Director, Inspired Energy PLC

Babs Murphy, Chief Executive, North & Western Lancashire Chambers of Commerce

Mike Damms, chief executive, East Lancashire Chambers of Commerce

Jeremy Nicholson, director, Energy Intensive Users Group

Debbie Baker, head of public affairs, GrowHow

David Workman, director, Confederation of Paper Industries

Anthony Flinn, managing director, HCF

Alex Patrick-Smith, managing director, Hinton Perry & Davenhill Ltd

Mike Shirley, managing director, Hudsons of England Ltd

Stan Higgins, chief executive officer, NEPIC

Mike McGee, director, Cardigan Sand & Gravel Co Ltd

Christopher Walmsley, director, Daedalian Glass Ltd

Gary McGann, group chief executive officer, Smurfit Kappa Group PLC

Agnes Colhoun, managing director, Allglass Reprocesors (UK) Ltd

Stephen Pollock-Hill, chairman and managing director, Nazeing Glass Works Ltd

Allan Laing, chief executive officer, Pentagon Chemicals

Ian Stark, chief executive officer, Chemoxy International Ltd

Graham Payne, executive secretary, Briar Technical Services Ltd

Piers Grummett, plant manager, Stoelzle Flaconnage Ltd

Robert Tyler, managing supervisor, Rhodia UK Ltd/ Solvay Group

Tony Bastock, group managing director, Contract Chemicals Ltd