Not all culture was lost during the war | Brief letters

Paintings kept safe | The red king | A heart-stopping euphemism | Uses for olive oil | Useless toolsI was fascinated to read about the wartime safe-keeping of National Gallery paintings (Canaletto masterpiece returns to Wales 80 years after it was hidden in slate mine, 7 May). I remember my mother taking me and my sister to the gallery early on in the war to see the one painting remaining for people to see, and she told us then that all the others had gone to be safely stored within caves in the