28 MAY 1994, Page 28

Incorrect stoning

Sir: I was surprised to see my name, cou- pled with Professor Lewis Wolpert, in brackets in Norman Stone's review of a book by Pavel Sudoplatov (Books, 14 May). We were both stoned as 'despising' religion.

Could I have been confused with a distin- guished Oxford biologist, Richard Dawkins, famous for selfish genes? I see religious quests as proto-science, religions as focus- ing important questions and suggesting answers that at the very least have psycho- logical and social significance. To say I `despise' religion is not only uninteresting and irrelevant to the book being reviewed, it is incorrect.

Richard Gregory

University of Bristol, Dept of Psychology, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol