John McDowell

There was no ‘capitulation’, as Glen Bowersock puts it, by Constantinople before the Turks in 1453 (LRB, 11 February). Constantine XI Palaiologos refused an offer of safe passage from Mehmed II, removed his purple robe, took up his sword, and remains missing in action.

SIR: May I comment on Hilary Putnam’s review of The Varieties of Reference by Gareth Evans? Putnam gives the impression that the book is a failure, deserving attention only in one chapter, and even there only in spite of its theoretical ambitions. I think most readers will find this judgment perverse.Putnam accuses the book of ‘relentless technicality’. It is certainly difficult, but Putnam himself...