Starting with a bang

SIR – Most of us are not astronomers, so we must defer to Lord Rees of Ludlow when he says that scientific advances bring us no nearer to knowing what there was before the Big Bang (report, January 2).

To put this question another way, what was the Big Bang in? If you ask my wife, she will say “a paper bag”. Who is to say that she is wrong? Peter Chatham

New Arley, Warwickshire