AS somebody who is pretty widely read in Scottish literature I enjoyed Saturday's feature on 10 great Scottish novels ("From drug addicts to wizards and school-mistresses, 10 of the best Scottish novels", Herald Magazine, April 11), and I appreciate the enormous difficulty for anybody tasked with reducing such a list to only 10.

While I did not find much to disagree with on the books selected, I do feel it a little unfortunate that there should be no place for authors such as William McIlvanney, George MacDonald Fraser, AL Kennedy or for Scotland's greatest living writer, James Kelman.

If, however, I were to make an absolute case for just one book which I believe to have been unjustly excluded, it would have to be Jeff Torrington's Swing Hammer Swing! which is more than a match for most of the books on the Herald's list.

David Gray, Glasgow G11.

A normal schooling

RUSSELL Leadbetter's article on Mackintosh's Scotland Street School (Those Were The Days, April 11)refers to another fine and indeed older building, the Normal School. It was built in 1837 in Glasgow's New City Road, and was the forerunner of the teacher-training college at Jordanhill in the west of the city.

Arriving in Glasgow as a child in the mid-1950s, I was intrigued by the destination "Normal School" on the front of the No 29 tram from Maryhill. As a Francophile, I was pleased in future years to discover that the name was an import from France, "l'école normale", the postgraduate school where students learned the norms of their future professions. Fortunately, there was no requirement for the students, or indeed their teachers, to be in any way normal.

Gilbert MacKay, Newton Mearns.

Less means more

MAY I thank Alan Fitzpatrick (Letters, April 13) for giving me a good laugh in these worrying times?

His vision, however, of a sheep munching in ever-decreasing circles does have some relation to reality. Over a number of years travelling through rural France, we saw goats tethered to the fence on the verge of a main road, munching away happily. One assumes that the owner turned up occasionally to move them along to fresh pasture. Perhaps this came under the heading of the signs we also saw, “Moins de Fauchage, plus de Nature”, the less grass cutting, the more Nature.

Thank goodness for the small things that entertain us these days.

P Davidson, Falkirk.

Card trick

A KIND neighbour left a large chocolate Easter egg at my door. After I had eaten it and the little eggs inside, I cut up the cardboard into small message notes. I do the same with old envelopes. They come in so useful. You can tell I lived through the Second World War.

Catherine Murray, Largs.

Is it spring yet?

THE report of the rare sighting of a song sparrow from America on a remote Scottish island ("Rare UK sighting of song sparrow", The Herald, April 11 ), reminds me that so far has been no report of the first sighting of a cuckoo from Africa in these parts.

Is it early days, or are flights cancelled?

R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.