Preserved Gaelic

Gaelic certainly does not ­deserve to be mocked or ­maligned (Letters, 9 November).

It is a language which deserves the solemn respect accorded to a great work of art, such as a ­Damien Hirst installation in which a strangely unnatural static carcass hangs suspended for perpetuity in a guarded and tightly sealed tank of formaldehyde, its spectral power to beguile and bewilder matched only by its exorbitant expense.

Joanna Cassidy Campbell

Chambers Street

Edinburgh