7 OCTOBER 2006, Page 24

A resignation issue

From Andrew Sinclair

Sir: I was the other Fellow of Churchill College who resigned with Francis Crick over the chapel issue (‘The genetic code genius failed to kill faith’, 30 September). Matt Ridley in his biography does not quite understand what happened. Our understanding was that Churchill was to build a multi-faith chapel. You could even bring in Islam on a trolley. There were more Anglican chapels per square metre in Cambridge than any where else on the globe. At a Fellows’ meeting dealing with the Beaumont gift, Charles Snow led a vote against an Anglican chapel, which was won by 13 votes to 12.

The master of the college, the physicist Sir John Cockcroft, had split the atom, and we were merely quarks.

Andrew Sinclair London SW1