12 MARCH 2005, Page 21

A lesser terror

From Rory Allen

Sir: Mark Steyn’s otherwise astute article (‘Death of a Salesman’) in your 19 February issue missed the most obvious flaw in The Crucible. When I first heard the play at a time when Radio Three was the Third Programme, and still broadcast drama — I assumed it was a satire directed at the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s. I was astonished to learn that Miller had intended it as an indictment of McCarthyism. It puzzled me then, and still does, that anyone as intelligent as Miller could have somehow blotted out from his mind the horrors of the Red Terror, while agonising over the much milder persecutions of McCarthy and his cohorts.

Rory Allen London SE21