How to spot the book club scam | Brief letters

Thank you, Joe Dunthorne, for your dogged investigation of the book club scam (Like many authors, I’m bombarded by scam fanmail. I wasn’t prepared for what would happen when I wrote back, 1 November). I get two or three emails like this a month, promising me attentive reading of one or other of my books from 500 members. Then will follow a request for a modest fee, for “distribution” of my text. I know this, because I once replied. Last week I told “Anna” from Amherst (or was it “Vanessa” from Vancouver?) that I had forwarded her email to report@phishing.gov.uk. She thanked me for my interest.
Carolyn Steedman
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

John Crace – who is always stimulating – says we are in “what is forecast to be the toughest decade for the country on record” (Digested week, 30 October). Oh, really? What about 1925-35 with the general strike, the great depression and the hunger marches? Or 1939-49 with the second world war and its aftermath? Or the soaring inflation of 1970s?
Peter Coltman
Leeds

Can someone please tell Dal Chodha that natural fabrics do not dry faster than synthetic fabrics (Dripping with style: what fashion insiders wear in the rain, 30 October). I worry he’s going to catch a cold next time there’s a downpour.
Huw Morgan
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Surely no one who has travelled through Perthshire could forget the infamous 17th-century buccaneer Findo Gask (Letters, 4 November)?
David Johnson
Dumfries