Sir – The controversial development by Doric Properties at Botley includes a cinema and I see from a recent issue of The Oxford Times that the proposed new Westgate will also have a cinema. I am totally mystified.

As a regular cinema goer — usually once a week — I fail to see the need. Over the last few years, I don’t think I have ever been in a full cinema, except for the new direct screenings of opera or popular London plays. Even then, if these are sold out, the cinema puts on extra showings. Mostly an auditorium is a third to a half full.

I have also, in the last year, been in audiences numbering two, three, four and six and these were popular films, at reasonable hours. Oxford does not need any more cinemas. They will remove audiences from existing ones, which will be very detrimental or (and) be white elephants themselves.

I remember in the Fifties my schoolfriends and I joining long snaking queues outside the old Regal in Cowley Road, or the Ritz in Gloucester Green and sometimes being turned away, as we were never going to get in. Those days are long gone.

Glena Chadwick, Charlbury