There were other attractions too. He became infatuated with Ingrid Bergman, with whom he starred in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), and then with Barbra Streisand, with whom he appeared in Funny Girl in 1968 (“I was madly in love with her but it wasn’t reciprocated”).

His marriage to Faten Hamama finally ended in divorce in 1974, although he later maintained that she was the love of his life.

^{Faten Hamama with Omar Sharif and their son Tarek (AP)}

In 2001 he said: “It’s not that we stopped loving, it’s that life separated us. After I became famous in the West, I just didn’t see enough of her. She was a famous actress in Egypt, and I was living all over the place, in hotels, not seeing her. And I was afraid that I’d fall in love with some dizzy blonde and leave my beloved wife for her. I didn’t want to give her that problem, so I went to her and said: ‘Look, we don’t see each other enough,’ and she said: ‘Do you love anyone else?’ and I said: ‘No, but I think I might, at any moment. I meet all these beautiful girls, actresses and other women.’ ”

For her part, between 1966 and 1971 Faten Hamama divided her time between Lebanon and London, complaining of political harassment in Cairo – although President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to persuade her to return to Egypt, describing her as “a national treasure”.

She continued to be highly regarded , and some of her movies, such as The Open Door (1964), sought to promote women’s rights; I Want a Solution (1975) is said to have inspired changes to Egyptian marriage and divorce laws.

Her final feature film was Land of Dreams (1993). In 2000 she appeared in a popular Arabic television series, Wagh el qamar.

In 1996, as Egypt celebrated 100 years of the nation’s cinema, she was voted the country’s most important actress, and 18 of her films were named among the best 150 made. In 2000 Egypt’s film critics declared her the “Star of the Century”.

Faten Hamama is survived by her third husband, Mohamed Abdel Wahab Mahmoud, an Egyptian physician, and by the daughter of her first marriage and the son of her marriage to Omar Sharif.

Faten Hamama, born May 27 1931, died January 17 2015

SIR – Calls for a minimum price for alcohol to ease the A&E crisis totally miss the point. The vast majority of drunks who fill up hospital wards at weekends have been drinking in pubs and clubs, where alcohol prices are many times higher than the minimum price suggested.

The most effective action would be to scrap Labour’s 24-hour drinking laws.

Paul Homewood
Stocksbridge, South Yorkshire

SIR – I share the view of Dr Kieran Moriarty and others that evidence-based policies are required to deal with alcohol misuse in Britain.

Minimum unit pricing for alcohol is, however, not an evidence-based measure. The case for it rests on unproven models and its legality is currently being assessed by the European Court of Justice. It is a heavy-handed way of trying to encourage responsible drinkers to drink slightly more responsibly while doing nothing to deter heavy drinkers, who are largely insensitive to price.

Price-fixing does not become good policy just because the motives are commendable.

David Frost
Chief Executive, Scotch Whisky Association

SIR – Never trust a simple solution to a difficult problem. Raising the cost of alcohol will not help with the problems facing A&E departments.

Take cigarettes, for example. Prices have been put up numerous times in the past. Sales tended to drop for a short time but quickly return to previous levels.

It wasn’t until the health effects were hammered home that levels of smoking dropped in the long term.

Les Sharp Hersham, Surrey

SIR – Fifty-one years ago my father bought a litre bottle of gin made by a well-known firm. I still have the receipt – the bottle cost him £4 15s (£4.75). Over the recent Christmas period an identical bottle was available in my local supermarket for £17.

I can think of no other item of food or drink that has risen in price by a factor of less than four in 51 years. It is quite obvious that alcohol is grossly underpriced. A 50 pence minimum unit price for alcohol would be a welcome start to bringing alcohol misuse under control – and it would help the Exchequer as well.

Dr Ann-Mary Hills
Tonbridge, Kent

SIR – Alcohol is responsible for wide-ranging problems in society and puts a severe strain on our police and ambulance services. Schools and other agencies must provide better education on the destructive effects of alcohol misuse.

Clifford Baxter Wareham, Dorset

Protecting Britain against radicalisation

Andrew Gilligan exposes the fragility of the Government’s efforts to tackle radicalisation.

It is naive to believe that by focusing on an inclusive multicultural society – without some acknowledgment of the conflict between democracy and radical Islam – fair-mindedness and democracy will prevail. The Government needs to prevent polarisation in society by clearly stating that we cannot be tolerant of anti-democratic rhetoric from any quarter.

Elizabeth Jones
Amersham, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, says that “we spend more on the heating allowance for the elderly in a year than we do on the combined budgets of our security services – GCHQ, MI6 and MI5”.

Many elderly people would willingly forego their heating allowance if they were assured that the money would be ring-fenced for redeployment in our security services.

In an election year it would be difficult for the Coalition Government to renege on their promises about maintaining heating allowances for the elderly. The Chancellor could instead offer tax relief to anyone who returned their heating allowance for use in the security budget.

Charles Tweedie
Ludlow, Shropshire

Controlling squirrels

(Rex Features)

SIR – Ginny Martin has obviously never witnessed the wanton destruction of her garden by grey squirrels; never seen her hours of work and money spent on planting bulbs completely spoiled; never seen grey squirrels entwining their bodies around bird feeders and eating the seed which she has bought for the garden birds; never seen them raiding nests for eggs and young birds; never seen them stripping the bark off trees.

In our squirrel trap we have yet to snare a red squirrel; small birds and mice are not snared as they can easily escape; and a pigeon once or twice a year is let out unharmed.

A grey squirrel “cull” is not about eradicating the species, but rather keeping the numbers to an acceptable level.

Carol Parkin
Poole, Dorset

Public sector strikes

SIR – The Conservatives’ proposals to curb strikes in the public sector are most welcome.

One reason teachers strike comparatively often is that their terms and conditions encourage them to do so. Schools are only required to open for 190 days a year. Yet when teachers go on strike they only lose 1/365th of their pay. Effectively teachers only lose half a day’s pay when they strike for a whole day, which hardly seems fair.

Phil Taylor
London W13

Boko Haram

SIR – It is not strictly correct to say that boko means book in the Hausa language, as David Blair asserts in his otherwise excellent article on the Islamist group Boko Haram (“Beware the rise of Africa’s own al-Qaeda state”).

When the British first arrived in Northern Nigeria, Hausa was written in Arabic script, which was called ajami. The British introduced Roman script, and Hausa written in Roman script was subsequently called boko to distinguish it from ajami.

Boko later became a word to describe books written in Roman script, which led on to Western education. The Hausa word for book is “littafi”.

John Hare
Benenden, Kent

Capital adventures

SIR – Caroline McGhie (“Find us a place with space”) suggests that couples with young families moving to the outskirts of London are somehow discovering amazing pastures new.

The idea of “moving farther east” sounds so adventurous until you realise this means moving to Walthamstow.

If these people want more space and better value they ought to give Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds or Manchester a go – plenty of culture, lovely countryside and three-bedroom semis on offer for a lot less than £300,000.

Joanna Dunn
Stapleford, Nottingham

Who can be trusted to run the economy?

SIR – During Gordon Brown’s tenure as Chancellor, this country had both product and wage deflation. Product prices fell as much cheaper Chinese goods became available; wages fell as cheap EU migrant labour flooded in.

The deflation was hidden by Brown’s profligacy that would, under any other circumstances, have caused massive inflation in wages and prices. He was able to get away with years of financial illiteracy thanks to an equally financially illiterate oppostion. This opposition is now in charge.

We still run a huge current account and balance of trade deficit and pump money into the economy, distorting house and share values. Can either Labour or the Conservatives be trusted with another five years in power?

John Upex
Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Dodging debate

SIR – I hope every time Mr Cameron passes the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square he hangs his head in shame. Churchill never ran away from a fight.

Cameron would rather be called a coward than, in the middle of an election campaign, discuss important issues on television with the other party leaders. He needs to answer his critics and convince his followers that he will try harder next time.

Jim Rennie
Caerphilly, Glamorgan

SIR – Messrs Miliband, Clegg and Farage flatter themselves; I have absolutely no desire to see them on television, individually or en bloc.

Anthony Cumming
Ripon, North Yorkshire

Britannia rules the waves – with help from Europe

_{The Queen Victoria Cunard liner, depicted on this Gibraltar stamp, was built in Italy (Alamy)}

SIR – In his fascinating book review mentions the enormous ocean liners built for Cunard in recent years: Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary 2. But how many of these liners were built in Britain? Not a single one.

Writing in 2003, a member of the Mackie family, who ran one of Belfast’s most internationally renowned engineering companies, observed how the government had abandoned manufacturing in favour of information and banking services, and time would tell if the policy would be a success or a disaster. This is noted in The Lives of the Great Engineers of Ulster, edited by Prof Sir Bernard Crossland and John S Moore.

Disaster or not, it is to be hoped that the recent financial crisis has changed the general attitude towards manufacturing in Britain. Perhaps Cunard might even order a ship from a British yard.

J Charles Teggart
Bangor, Co Down

In defence of soya

SIR – Substitute dairy products may be “ghastly” to those looking for a taste of milk but they are delicious to people with no alternative. Those of us who are lactose intolerant welcomed the advent of almond, soya and other “milks” and spreads.

I remember when there was no milk substitute at all for porridge or cereals. The only non-dairy spread available was one used in Jewish cooking, and it most definitely wasn’t intended to go with Marmite on toast.

Pam Maybury
Bath

Here, boy

SIR – Like Michael Simkins’s wife, I know exactly where my husband is by following his recognisable whistle.

It makes taking him to the supermarket so much easier as I never lose him. We also have a specific family whistle, which is used to call children and dogs to heel.

Lynne Waldron
Woolavington, Somerset

SIR – I, too, am a constant whistler.

My preference is for songs from the Great American Songbook – good melodies that tell a story.

Bernard Greenberg
Oxford

Multi-purpose

SIR – There may be no plans for self-emptying dishwashers, but I have long maintained that a kitchen equipped with two dishwashers would have no need for a crockery cupboard.

James Fraser
Knowle Green, Surrey