DENNIS KENNEDY,
Sir, - Mary Burgess's article (Arts, March 4th) is presented as a a refutation of mine on Belfast's bid to become a European Capital of Culture (Arts, February 15th) when, in fact, Miss Burgess seems to endorse my thesis that the Belfast bid is misconceived and based on error and exaggeration.
She does at one point say that I was mistaken to state that the Capital of Culture Programme was geared towards the promotion of "high culture" alone, but I fear it is Miss Burgess who is mistaken - I said no such thing, as reference to my article will show. In any event Miss Burgess goes on to base her own case for Belfast on the high culture of literature and drama.
Like myself she questions the inclusion of "inventors and engineers" as key players in Belfast's cultural credentials. Far from this being a decoy, however, she should be aware that the promoters of the bid told the relevant Stormont committee last month that "Made in Belfast: the creativity and inventiveness of the city" was one of the main themes of their application.
Not everyone would agree with Miss Burgess that Belfast's contribution to the literary revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a sufficient basis for a 21st-century bid to be a European capital of culture, but it is certainly more relevant than some of the flights of fancy currently emanating from supporters of the bid. - Yours, etc.,
DENNIS KENNEDY,
Belfast 7.
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Sir, - Paul S. Burns (February 28th) need hardly remind me of Belfast's reputation for sectarianism, provinciality and philistinism.
Yet the city has other aspects too. I have been privileged over a long lifetime to have known Belfast people who were not sectarian, provincial or philistine - and from both communities.
Such people would be encouraged and strengthened if the Belfast bid for European City of Culture 2008 were to succeed. Remember that, despite the warts on the face of Belfast, it has also been, in the words of Seamus Heaney, "the city of inventors, entrepreneurs, writers, actors, musicians and sporting stars". - Yours, etc.,
ROBERT GREACEN,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.