Hats for eating

SIR – Recent letters (November 22) have discussed the men in Howards End who wear hats indoors.

There is evidence that, until the end of the 19th century, members of the Reform Club “wore hats in the clubhouse and especially at lunchtime”.

Peter Halliday

London SW19

SIR – My aunt took some friends for a walk in the woods which, unknown to her, contained a nudist colony: The Knutsford Sun Club.

She was startled by a man, wearing only a beret, cutting the undergrowth with a machete. When she reported the encounter to her husband, he remarked: “He might at least have taken his hat off to a lady.”

John Bromley-davenport

Malpas, Cheshire