Jellicles can and jellicles do

JACK WATKINS reports on Shackleton’s sledge dogs

(Britain’s greatest masterpieces, March 16), but overlooks Mrs Chippy, the cat belonging to the ship’s carpenter, Harry Mcneish. One of Frank Hurley’s photographs

(above) shows the cat perched on the shoulder of Perce Blackborow, the stowaway told by Shackleton that he would be the first to be eaten. Mcneish is buried in the Karori Cemetery, Wellington, New Zealand, and there, resting on his tombstone, is a bronze statue of Mrs Chippy.

David Saunders, Pembrokeshire

IT is unfortunate that it takes Putin’s war against Ukraine to remind us that food security begins at home (Agromenes, March 9). Of course, the Environmental Land Management schemes are a key component in helping to ‘save the planet’, but the priority is to ensure that all arable available is kept for food production and not immersed under solar farms or new-build concrete. The Defra website states ‘we also support our world-leading food, farming and fishing industries’. It’s time it fulfilled this statement and dropped the ‘also’, which suggests food production and security is not a priority.

Michael Chandler, Badenwürttemberg, Germany