4 JUNE 2005, Page 20

Episcopal contrasts

From Timothy O’Sullivan Sir: In later life Cardinal Hume regretted choosing the cloister over training for mortal combat in 1941 (Books, 28 May). He would tell anybody who cared to ask that he did so in the naive expectation that as a monk he would be among the first to be strung up in the event of a successful invasion, or that he would presently be conscripted anyway.

Timothy O’Sullivan

Winchelsea, East Sussex