Iain Bamforth

Images of Oscar Pistorius’s tattoo of Corinthians 9:27 reveal that Jacqueline Rose has hobbled her inferences about his character by misquoting a key word: it reads not ‘I execute each stride with intent’ but ‘I execute each strike with intent.’

Susan Pedersen writes about Britain’s ‘second most famous nurse’, Edith Cavell (LRB, 14 April). It is a curiosity of literary history that Gottfried Benn, the German expressionist poet, was present at her execution in his official capacity as surgeon major to the German army in Brussels: he confirmed Cavell’s death, closed her eyes and laid her in her coffin.These details come from the eyewitness...

The map of Yemen shown in Tariq Ali’s article should have indicated that the archipelago of Socotra (off the Horn of Africa) is also part of the Republic (LRB, 25 March). It might not be of great political importance today, but the main island was a major trading post as far back as the Ptolemies. Socotra is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet; at least a third of its endemic flora –...