IF Sarah Lyall (Let’s put the drink down and just talk, News Review, last week) were really qualified to write A Field Guide to the British she would know we already have enough of our countrymen giving us lectures on the perils of drinking, as well as smoking, eating, driving and almost every other pursuit that ends with “ing” (except perhaps cycling).

Her irritating, supercilious, schoolma’am-like tone dissuaded me from reading the rest of the lecture and, besides, I’d spilt my sixth pint of Guinness over it. I wonder how, say, The Washington Post would react if I asked it to devote half a page to an article by somebody most people had never heard of dedicated to the perils of its countrymen eating too many Big Macs.

May I suggest Lyall returns to her own country to write about its more relaxed approach to carrying guns and slaying its citizens with them. Although I suggest, to use her words, it will be hard for the public to change its attitude over there when many of the people it admires spend so much time using them. Les Golden Allestree, Derbyshire

Hard-earned pints Nothing wrong with having a drink as long as you don’t upset or attack anyone. The lads I know graft hard all week in monotonous but essential jobs, and so the reward at the weekend is beer and football. Some choose rifles and religion, but that’s not for me. J Whiteside Lytham, Lancashire

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