One more thing

events of Scottish history – the Battle of Hastings. The fact that it happened on the south coast of England in no way detracts from its significance for us in Scotland

The power and character of our language –English – owes so much to that event. The Norman conquest overlaid a Romance vocabulary on to a West Germanic language, and thus guaranteed us a language rich in synonyms, and largely lacking in inflections.

The subsequent struggle for power between the Norman kings and their imported aristocracy led to Magna Carta, the English common law and ultimately to our notions of individual liberty.

We remember and celebrate important anniversaries not simply as a question of identity, but also because they often carry lessons for us. Hastings and the resulting Norman conquest should remind us that we in the North of our island cannot divorce ourselves from major events in its South.

OTTO INGLIS Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh Thank you for Jack Davidson’s admirably detailed obituary of Lord Murray (Saturday 15 October). But there is one achievement now forgotten or not known about, but an astonishing initiative at the time that has benefited us all since and so should be drawn to the public’s attention: as Lord Advocate, Ronald King Murray had the will and found a way to abolish feu duties.

This remarkably effective Labour politician regarded that as the most important thing he had managed to do, getting rid of a compulsory and troublesome financial imposition, with its unpleasant reminder of the age-old vassal state under feudalism. (REV) JACK KELLET

Innerleithen