Actor who started in the West End in Hair, and went on to TV dramas including Casualty, Holby City and Inspector Morse

The actor Judy Loe, who has died aged 78 after suffering from cancer, graduated from children’s television to popular dramas such as The Chief and Casualty – but she never escaped the tag of being the widow of Richard Beckinsale, the British comedy actor remembered for his roles in Rising Damp and Porridge. “I get annoyed at being continually presented as the brave little widow having a tough time,” she said in 1987, eight years after his death at 31 from a heart attack.

Their daughter, Kate Beckinsale, went on to become a Hollywood star, while Loe enjoyed a satisfying career on British television. She was settling down to a new life with the director Roy Battersby and looking to the future when she landed one of her best roles, in the seven-part romantic drama Yesterday’s Dreams (1987). As a divorcee in a new relationship with a mechanic, she is still being wooed by her former husband, a high-powered business executive. Her character, Diane, eventually decides to leave the past behind.

Ukrainian seeks to unify the heavyweight division again at Wembley on Saturday before putting family time first

Boxing, as Oleksandr Usyk knows, gets everyone in the end. It is a harsh and pitiless business and earlier this week, at the end of a long afternoon answering the same old questions in front of a line of television cameras, Usyk sat down with a small group of familiar faces who have written about him for years. During his last assignment for the day he opened up a little more as he spoke about the sacrifices boxing demands.

He told us how much he wanted to see his wife, Yekaterina, as she had just flown into London and they would be reunited that evening. Three months had passed, in a gruelling training camp, since they had been together and Usyk spoke about missing her and their four children.

If Israel’s prime minister accepts a ceasefire deal soon, it will only be because the timing suits him. He, like his country, will face a reckoning

Will the war in Gaza last for ever? It’s not a wholly rhetorical question. There are days when I fear that the death and devastation that has gone on for 650 days will never stop, that it will eventually settle into a constant, low-level attritional war inside the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a war within a war – that becomes a background hum to world affairs, the way the Troubles in Northern Ireland endured for 30 years. In this same nightmare, incidentally, I see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has already sat in Israel’s prime ministerial chair for nearly 18 years, on and off, staying put for another 18 years or more, ruling the country until he is 100.

Israelis don’t want either of those things to happen. Polls show that only a minority trust Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority – about 74% – want this terrible war to end. As the leader of one of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, parties that this week quit Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – over the government’s failure to pass a bill permanently exempting Haredi youth from military service – recently put it: “I don’t understand what we are fighting for there … I don’t understand what the need is.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Edward Collier disputes an editorial that said one should never try to explain Test cricket to Americans. Plus letters from David Farrelly, Liz Fuller and Seán Duffy

Your editorial (15 July) says: “Never try to explain Test cricket to an American.” I took an American guest – it was her first cricket match – to Lord’s for the third day of the recent Test match between England and India. In terms of the kind of “excitement” that is the hallmark of T20 and the ghastly Hundred (explosive batting, athletic fielding), the day was somewhat lacking. At times, play was slow, almost becalmed. However, at the end of the day she pronounced that it had been one of her favourite sporting occasions, and despite leaving England the next day, she practically begged me to consider taking her again as a guest next year.

It turns out that generalising about a country or its people isn’t quite the slam dunk (to borrow a phrase from one of her favourite sports) that your editorial seems to think it is.
Edward Collier
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Readers respond to an article that described people at the music festival as the voice of the silent majority

John Harris paints Glastonbury as a reflection of England’s liberal heart, but let’s not kid ourselves (At Glastonbury, I saw what England’s silent majority really looks like. Why aren’t politicians listening?, 13 July). Glastonbury might be progressive in spirit, but it’s also pricey, exclusive and overwhelmingly middle class.

Tickets sell out in minutes. Getting there costs a fortune. That’s not the everyday Britain most people live in. Yes, millions of people in this country care about fairness, climate and compassion. But many are too exhausted to believe politics will ever work for them. They’re not watching headline sets. They’re dealing with rent hikes and bills they can’t pay.

Michael Daley recalls a Mona Lisa loan that narrowly avoided disaster, Tony Meacock knows where to find a Bayeux replica, and Michelle Gibson counsels against carting the priceless threads around the country

Patrick Wintour likens the British Museum’s loan/swap of the Bayeux tapestry for treasures from Sutton Hoo to France’s 1963 loan of the Mona Lisa to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as examples of art’s service in international diplomacy (The diplomacy of art: Bayeux tapestry loan shows cultural gifts still matter, 11 July). The example is inauspicious.

While at the Met, the Leonardo was stored in a strongroom overnight. One night, a fire sprinkler malfunctioned and sprayed water over the picture for hours. Fortunately, it was face up and therefore the paint layers were protected by the glass cover. Had it been face down, its panel would have been saturated and warped, with horrendous consequences. The incident was covered up – and was only disclosed (unofficially) three decades later by the ex-Met director Thomas Hoving in his memoir.
Michael Daley
Director, ArtWatch UK