Personal testament
Sir: At a recent Westminster Abbey memorial service I was invited to read a passage from the New Testament. Despite an expressed preference for the King James Authorised Version, the Abbey authorities made clear they expected the modernised text — which, they informed me, ‘is the one used by the Abbey’ — to be adhered to, and I reluctantly complied.
One can but admire the open-mindedness of the Church of England these days toward traditions of other faiths. Is it then too much to hope that in one of London’s two main Anglican places of worship, Church members themselves might enjoy a similar deference to their preferences? Or is the beautiful Authorised Version, a few years short of its 400th anniversary, now officially banished from the city of its birth?
Sir John Weston
Richmond, Surrey
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