Sir Curtis Keeble

Peter Pooley writes: Curtis Keeble (obituary, Dec 12) was a great man to be with in a crisis. His level-headedness, allied to exceptional powers of concentration, endeared him to colleagues and to ministers alike. I sat next to him one day in 1972 when we prepared for an emergency landing at a tiny airport at Reykjavik where there was a real risk that we would overrun and end up in the sea. As we donned our life jackets I asked if he had any advice, from his experience on war service. Curtis said: “Look out of the window. If, when you see the fire engines, we are still moving at speed, brace yourself.” He resumed reading his briefing on the state of the Cod War, for all the world as if he were on the commuter train from Thames Ditton. We came to a halt just by the emergency vehicles.

Peter Buckley

His Honour Judge Simon Brown, QC, writes: Peter Buckley (obituary, Dec 9) and I shared his twin beliefs that gardening is “a serious force for good” and that it is the duty of charities, such as the RHS and the Inner Temple, to reach more people, especially the young. As custodian of an historic garden in the City of London, two years ago I asked him whether the RHS would help us to appoint a new dynamic head gardener and if it would be interested in returning to the Inner Temple Garden and Temple Church to put on a special floral celebration to celebrate the 2008 Temple festival. He readily agreed to both, and, as a result of his enthusiastic input, in September, 15,000 people flocked to the RHS Floral Celebration in the Temple.

Jørn Utzon

James Thomas writes: I worked in Jørn Utzon’s (obituary, Dec 1) small design office in the remote seaside village of Hellebaek in northern Denmark for the whole of 1960; there were never more than 12 of us in total. It was an exciting place to be, with young architects from all over the world — Japan, America, Norway, Denmark, Australia — working hard and happily under this inspiring leader. The drawings of the Opera House were extremely complicated and difficult to get right, but eventually there were thousands of detailed drawings produced from Utzon’s office. We also made a very large number of exploratory models.

Utzon was an outstanding teacher and wanted all of us to understand his deeply held beliefs about the nature of architecture. For him, solving the mathematical problem, getting the geometry right and finding a simple, elegant solution to complex issues was the crucial thing, however long it took.

He also strove to bring out the essential character of the materials he worked with: brick, wood and plywood, glazed tiles and the infinite possibilities of reinforced concrete.