Keep your shirt on

sir – I can remember seeing farm labourers scything corn (Letters, May 25) in the harvest in Yorkshire in the early 1940s. None of them would have attempted it shirtless, however warm the weather. Most would have kept their jackets on. There were too many biting insects.

It would have been no different in Ross Poldark’s Cornwall in the late 18th century – but that would not have been good television. Imagine him with insect bites all over his torso.

John H Noble

Llanilar, Cardiganshire