28 JUNE 1975, Page 4

Charisma

Sir: Mr Varley, a Guardian scribe informed us the day after Wilson's ministerial switch, is deficient in charisma compared to Mr Benn. Thus what was once a theological term signifying a special gift of divine grace has sunk into a cliché to describe political enfants terribles with a flair for hogging the limelight. However, the said divine gift, as understood among the early Christians, included not only a gift of healing but also the gift of tongues, a faculty defined in my dictionary as "a kind of ecstatic utterance usually unintelligible to the hearers, and even to the speakers, therefore requiring interpretation". Indeed the more one thinks about it the more does glossolalia fit Mr B'enn! G. 'Reichardt 12a Mount Pleasant Road, Poole.