• TO counterbalance the views expressed in the Boris Johnson’s national newspaper column defending and offending the Muslim woman and the wearing of the burka and the veil in this country.

Five weeks before that column appeared, on a busy Sunday morning in the Finchley Road Waitrose supermarket, I happened to pass a tall, elegant woman in long, dark clothes, not at all resembling a letterbox.

I could see her eyes. They looked gentle and intense as she listened to me say that I thought she expressed a rich and mysterious culture.

She said: “Thank you. You make me feel welcome.”

“You are,” I said.

FELICITY SCHULTZ
Ferncroft Avenue, NW3