Sir: "If what the artists produce," 'says Cato (August 11),
"gets too much out of kilter with what is acceptable to society then of course there will be censorship, and I for one would not resist it."
Acceptable, one assumes, to the bulk of society. No book is more "Out of kilter " with the society of postChristian Britain than the Bible (which has its share of sex and violence!) and no book, therefore, more ripe for the blue pencil. In a society in which we so obviously do not love our neighbours as ourselves repeated exhortations to do so are patently "out of liter!"
Or perhaps Cato means that new books should be censored? In that case, of course, formerly banned books may be published when the times so change that the cease to be out of step with society. That is to say we may read only those books which reflect the age in which we live. And so an evil society may ban those books which might lead it out of the depths, Andrew Turek Hertford College, Oxford
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