D BENNETT writes (Letters, January 24) about audience members who had the bad manners to talk incessantly throughout a performance at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Another form of rudeness is manifested in the growing obsession with giving a standing ovation. A performance of Top Hat at the Theatre Royal was marred for me by this practice. Top Hat has an elaborate and extended finale after the cast have taken their bows, but so many people stood up to applaud that I was faced with the unpleasant choice of either missing the finale or standing and so blocking the view for people behind me. And, of course, some people may have infirmities or disabilities that mean that they cannot stand.

It is time that managements took steps to stop this practice, which is ego-driven and inconsiderate.

Paul Brownsey,

19 Larchfield Road, Bearsden.

FURTHER to Thom Cross's letter (January 24) on the need for a biopic and/or TV series on the life of Burns, an admirable starting point would be the excellent quintet of novels by James Barke, originally published in the 1940s, and only recently brought back into print by Black And White Publishing.

The first two of these, The Wind That Shakes The Barley and The Song In The Green Thorn Tree, give readers a wholly believable pair of stories, with vivid characterisation and dialogue, without moralising on the great man's faults; the other books in the series are surely due for publication soon.

Alan Anderson,

42 St Baldred's Road, North Berwick.

I HAVE read that the BBC's new Henry VIII drama, Wolf Hall, was seen by more than four million viewers on its first showing, thus making it the most successful drama on BBC2 for more than a decade. Likewise I have read the superlative reviews which critics have heaped upon it.

So what do I know? I thought that the opening episode was one of the most boring, meandering, and totally disappointing dramas ever to have appeared on British television. Luckily I was able to see Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies at Stratford last year, performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company, where I, and the rest of the audience, sat enthralled and captivated from the very start of the first production through six hours of world-class drama until the final "curtain" at the end of the second drama. Would that the BBC had come to an agreement with the RSC to film or televise those productions, and the British public would have experienced Hilary Mantel's unique works brought to life, on stage, as they should and must be.

Walter Paul,

69 Coplaw Street, Glasgow.