Gillian Darley

Nicholas Penny's review of Miranda Carter's biography of Anthony Blunt (LRB, 29 November) mentions that Picasso was one of Blunt's heroes. The lecture on Guernica that Blunt gave to first-year undergraduate students at the Courtauld Institute was a revelation. The passion with which our chilly and remote Director delivered his account of that painting showed us another man entirely.

It is neat of Owen Hatherley to set Jane Jacobs against the recent demise of the Heygate Estate (LRB, 27 July). As often when I read about Jacobs, or read her in her own words, I wonder why she took so long to visit London and then so briefly. The pulsing shopping centre at Elephant and Castle, still surviving, would test her judgment, Hatherley thinks. But she could have turned to that gadfly Ian...