SIR – There has been controversy over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. Now it seems the EU is interfering with Britain’s election.

How else can we read the adverse public-relations campaign targeting Brexit and Mrs May, apparently spearheaded by Jean-Claude Juncker? Is the EU hierarchy seeking to weaken Mrs May’s electoral chances and, as a consequence, her negotiating position?

As Iain Duncan-Smith put it: “If anything demonstrates that the vote last year to leave was a good decision it is the miserable and rude action of the president of the EU.”

Patrick Neville

Louth, Lincolnshire

SIR – The concept of a united Europe is laudable and reasonable. However, the present EU is nothing but a hegemony of the unscrupulous and disingenuous, persecuting a passive populous.

R J Rapkins

Puerto Mazarron, Murcia, Spain

Online abettors

SIR – Surely laws are already in place for tackling the part that social media play in terrorist offences, hate crime and threats of violence, when they are committed online or with the help of online media.

The Accessories and Abettors Act 1861 provides that an accessory to an indictable offence shall be treated in the same way as if he had actually committed the offence himself. It goes on to say “Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender.”

I’m sure a few prosecutions would lead to a change of tack by the social media companies.

Andrew Bolton

Nottingham

Warrior queen?

SIR – Daisy Dunn is somewhat wide of the mark in characterising Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus in the Persian-controlled province of Caria, as “bellicose and battle hungry”.

She was almost certainly unique as a female trierarch – the commander of a trireme – in the fleet assembled by the Persian “Great King” Xerxes as part of his attempt to invade Greece.

According to Herodotus, however, she was the only one of his commanders who advised against taking on the Greeks in the sea battle at Salamis. In the battle itself she hardly covered herself with glory, despite earning a temporary and mistaken reputation for bravery.

During the conflict she was so desperate to flee from a pursuing Athenian ship that she rammed, and sank, one of her allies’ ships that got in the way. This had two fortuitous results. The Athenian, assuming her to be an ally, broke off the chase, while Xerxes, having been told of her success in sinking what was assumed to be an enemy, supposedly said: “My men have turned into women, my women into men.”

Rod Ellis

Reading, Berkshire

BBC’s bad taste