Sir, - Your normally reliable Science Editor, Dick Ahlstrom, seems to me not to have kept faith with your readers in his January 5th review of The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking. "The illustrations make a wonderful accompaniment that helps to get the reader through concepts and ideas that as ever remain doggedly difficult to explain and devilishly difficult to absorb". They do no such thing; these computer-generated graphics are just irrelevant padding to spread out to a lavish 216-page coffee-table offering a text that would scarcely fill 50. That text is bluntly labelled "completely incomprehensible" by science writer James Le Fanu in this week's Tablet, whose readers are no daws.
Please keep faith with your readers by warning them not to shell out €32.25 for a copy of this impenetrable bilge. - Yours, etc.,
Fr THOMAS KELLEHER, Courceys, Kinsale, Co Cork.