21 MARCH 1998, Page 31

Excremental

Sir: Your issue of 14 March contained two articles which struck me as singularly repugnant.

In an open society people like the late Piero Manzoni (Arts) should be free to pre- sent their own excrement as an artistic statement and galleries like the Serpentine free to exhibit it. But by devoting two and a half columns to this uninspired defecator, you lend a certain aura to his stunts and to those feeding on them.

However, this is not half as deplorable as publishing Matthew Parris's Marxist inter- pretation of the Murdoch affair (Another voice). In a recent Times article, he described the West's Cold War policy as a fraud.

He is entitled to his opinions —pace The Spectator's traditional tolerance — but should this kind of lucubration not be con- fined to the radical organs of our media? Lionel Bloch

Halcyon, Ormond Avenue, Richmond, Surrey