I WON’T comment on the Piccadilly former Reynard’s site future, but I hope the connection with the novelist Nevil Shute will be commemorated in any future use.

As described in his excellent autobiography Slide Rule, Shute was manager when it was an aircraft factory in the 1930s.

If it is hard to believe York once made aircraft, as de-industrialisation takes hold, it is becoming easy to forget that York once made railway carriages and Terry’s chocolates. Strange, isn’t it, that once Margaret Thatcher started the rot, politicians of all parties showed so little concern for Britain’s declining industrial base?

Roger Backhouse, Orchard Road, Upper Poppleton, York.