Ivor Owen writes: As a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery I had the good fortune to work in close proximity to Ronald Butt (obituary, December 16) when he succeeded Paul Einzig in leading the political coverage of the Financial Times, and long before I became that paper’s Parliamentary Correspondent.

Butt quickly established a reputation for getting to the heart of political developments regardless of the news-management techniques (now known as political spin) employed by politicians on either the Goverment or Opposition benches. His refusal to be a pawn in party political games or to chase the will-o’-the wisp of the story of the day — whether generated by leaks from partisan sources or the by-product of the politics of particular newspapers — enabled him to establish as close a relationship with Hugh Gaitskell, then leader of the Labour Opposition, as with leading members of Harold Macmillan’s Cabinet.

Butt’s steadfastly upright approach was reflected in his attitude to membership of the Parliamentary Lobby Journalists. When he first sought election to the membership of the committee of that body, conducted by secret ballot, I had the temerity to ask whether he had voted for himself. He replied: “Of course not.” He was genuinely surprised to discover subsequently that a number of the other candidates had certainly done so.

Roy Stillman writes: Your obituary of Miles Hardie (November 19) brought back memories of heady days on staircase 17 at Oriel College when he was secretary of the JCR and John Collins was Dean.

Using his diplomatic and administrative skills, Miles set about persuading the dean that rules which applied to prewar 18-year-olds were inappropriate for ex-servicemen in their thirties. The Rhodes Scholars in our midst would assemble for cocoa at 10pm to air their grievances. The crunch came when Dean Collins published an interdict on “undergraduates” breaking and entering college after the gate closed at 10pm. Miles’s rejoinder was swift. He reminded the dean that the proper form of address was “Gentlemen”.

It is a great shame that he did not write his memoirs. A future biographer will find the task made easier by the score of large scrapbooks he kept during half a century of public service.

Praveen Kumar writes: The obituary of Ivan Illich (December 5) referred to one of his books as Medical Nemesis: The Appropriation of Health. The proper full title is Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health.

Dr Gerald Grainge writes: Your obituary of David Lewis (December 16) mentions his interest in studying the native navigation techniques of the South Pacific and his use of them in his circumnavigation in Rehu Moana of 1964-67.

He followed this with research in 1968-69 on the methods used by Polynesian navigators while making long-distance passages, both on traditional local craft and on a yacht he bought for the purpose and “temporarily stripped of compass and other artificial aids”.

The research was written up in 1972 as We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. Further results were added to the second edition in 1994.

The insights he provides into the use of sea and sky to steer a course from one Pacific island to another over hundreds of miles of ocean can be applied equally well to the understanding of the techniques of non-instrumental navigation used in ancient times in other regions of the world, for example by the Irish and Norse seamen of the first millennium AD.

Professor Arnold Feinstein (obituary, December 18) died on November 25, not November 26 as we said. We apologise for the mistake.