This letter to the editor of The Economist, which I’m reproducing in full below, made me chuckle.

SIR – It was somewhat misleading to reduce the credentials of Hannelore Kraft, the head of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia, to “an electrician’s wife from the Ruhr” (“Rebuffed on the Rhine”, May 19th). Ms Kraft is a business consultant who holds a degree in economics and who has studied and worked in Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany.

Do we still live in a world in which women need to define themselves in terms of their husband’s profession? I have never seen you describe Nicolas Sarkozy as “a singer’s husband from Paris” or Barack Obama as “a lawyer’s husband from Honolulu”.

Benjamin Tereick
Bayreuth, Germany