Watership Down was no utopia for the does

Trevor Masters (Reasons to be cheerful about the world in 2016, Letters, 31 December) thanks the Guardian for being here to help us retain our sanity in the coming year, and cites examples of content to back up the claim. I would like to add the Letters page, for the breadth of expertise, acumen, humanity, culture, wisdom and laugh-out-loud wit that reflects your readership. Thank us all in the fight ahead.
David Buckingham
Leamington Spa

• The rabbits of Watership Down do indeed send a warning (Loose canon, 30 December), namely that when the bucks seek sex, they abduct some nearby does and rape them. Once __more it seems that the male utopia is the female’s dystopia. I suggest Giles Fraser read Nadia Khomami’s report “British woman’s tale of captivity ‘shows reality of UK slavery’” in the same issue.
Professor Hilary Rose
London 

Annie Freud wrote a poem called Rare London Cheeses. Photograph: Jim Wileman

• “It seems that GK Chesterton was right when he said: ‘Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’,” writes Annie Freud (A new year that changed me, 30 December). Has she never heard of the great James McIntyre, the Cheese Poet?
Karl Shaw
Newcastle under Lyme

• In the 18th century Grimsby’s horse-drawn fire engine was parked in the parish church’s south transept (Diversity of purpose vital for rural churches, Letters, 26 December). Food for thought today?
Dermot Agnew
London

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