Sir – Professor Andrew Wiles will become Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford this year. When he was ten years old he read about Fermat’s last theorem in the public library at Cambridge.

As we all know he produced the proof which had eluded mathematicians for almost 400 years in 1995. I wonder what would have happened if the library had been closed because of cuts in public spending?

I need hardly add that the role of public libraries is wide ranging and vital.

Mary Hodges, Oxford

These are just a few of the many letters on libraries that we continue to receive — Ed