Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Letters

Tuesday, 18th March 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles.

Rough trade

Sir: Even for a self-described ‘posh bird’, Venetia Thompson (‘A Sloane in gangsta land’, 15 March) seems to be drawn to rough trade(rs) like a moth to the flame. Now that one lot has sacked her and another has drawn a gun on her, is she not tempted to branch out a bit?

Duncan Reed
London SW18

Atheist ramblings

Sir: So Gus Teljer (Letters, 15 March) thinks Martin Rowson’s ‘atheist ramblings’ show him, not only to have a ‘lost soul’ to be impertinently prayed for, but to be ‘a tedious and nauseating chap’. Teljer, on the other hand, reveals himself in his letter as the epitome of modest charm.

Michael Grosvenor Myer
Cambridge

Tin ear

Sir: Sir John Weston (Letters, 15 March) deplores Westminster Abbey’s refusal to allow the use of the King James Bible at a memorial service, and asks if it is now officially banished in London. Things are far worse than that. Many parish churches, and the chapels in cemeteries across the land, do not allow the option at all, having only modern translations on the premises, together with ‘Common Worship’ or a scruffy leaflet giving what passes for the burial service in modern English. If you’re very lucky, there may also be a few almost unrecognisable fragments of what is called the ‘Traditional Words’.

When the bereaved have specified emphatically that they wish to commemorate their departed with the Authorised Version and the Book of Common Prayer it is an affront to them, not to mention to the memory of the deceased, to insist on garbled and tin-eared translations of some of the greatest prose in the language, which by virtue of its quality as prose (quite apart from its validity as the word of God) is for many a real aid to meditation and consolation.

When will the Church wake up to its mistake, which is both philistine and deeply insensitive?

Andrew Wilton
London SW11

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 Next page

RICHARD SHEPHERD

March 22nd, 2008 12:07pm

Could'nt agree more with Andrew Wilton's letter (Tin Ear) on the demise of the King James Bible and similar. Clearly the CoE has completely lost its way under present leadership. My advice is to stay away, or convert to Islam !