How to spot the book club scam | Brief letters

One letter writer says authors are regularly targeted by emails offering to have hundreds of book-club members read their work, followed by a request for a fee. After replying to one such message, Carolyn Steedman now reports suspected scam emails to the UK phishing service.

The letters also challenge a description of the coming decade as the country’s toughest on record, citing the 1920s and 1930s, the Second World War and the inflation of the 1970s. Other correspondents dispute a claim about natural fabrics drying faster than synthetics and recall the supposed 17th-century Perthshire buccaneer Findo Gask.