Sir, Alice Wyndham (letter, Mar 10) wrote about learning poems by heart being not just for children. Inspired, I decided to learn Edward Thomas’s wonderful poem As the Team’s Head-Brass, which I last read at school 30 years ago. While my enfeebled brain has managed to retain just about all of it, e-mails go unopened, telephone calls unanswered and conversations often peter out halfway through a sentence. Getting to sleep at night is almost impossible. I may have learnt a poem, but at what cost?
Julian Watson
London W8