SIR – How many of your readers, I wonder, remember the civic service in Shipley Parish Church on the eve of the Queen’s Coronation?

The preacher was the superintendent Methodist minister, the Rev George Whitfield Luty, already noted as an extraordinarily-gifted speaker and whose sermon on that occasion was truly memorable.

He spoke of his hope and belief that in the reign of the second Elizabeth, the country would experience the emancipation of women.

How prophetic! Many commentators before and during the Jubilee Weekend have referred to the place of women in society – and how totally different it is now.

I was then a young reporter on the now defunct Shipley Guardian and remember, as I took down Mr Luty’s words in Pitman’s shorthand, a growing sense of awareness that he was providing the paper with a headline that was both timely and profound.

Colin Slater, Muriel Road, Beeston, Nottingham