Sir, - As an American author who helps to publicise the Pushkin Prizes in the United States, I marvel at Mr Finbar Conway's protest against the Duchess of Abercorn. For a man to feel "lumbered" by a visit from a beautiful woman might at first suggest he is myopic, oafishly churlish, perhaps even somehow deviant, and in any case most unIrish. For him to deny children access to the riches of literature might suggest he is protuberantly and bumptiously philistine. But Mr Finbar Conway's stand, it seems, is based on the loftiest Republican principles. Were the Queen to mention that water freezes at zero degrees Centigrade, Mr Conway would no doubt feel obliged to disagree, and to insist that all references to so royalist a phenomenon be removed from school chemistry tests. - Yours, etc.,
Richard Leigh, London NW3.