Sir: If I have to read another of your columnists
prattling on about Sir Thomas More, I may cancel my subscription. Jen- nifer Paterson is the latest example (Food, 24 June): 'We have had three good British saints this week. St John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, and St Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, were both executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII's claim to be head of the Church. Quite right too — look what has happened to that crumbling edifice.'
Ms Paterson should stick to cooking. Although I am sure she is unaware of it, Thomas More was also fond of cooking in his own way — to wit, the cooking of live human beings, condemned to the stake for heresy. In More's own words: 'And after the fire of Smithfield, hell doth receive them where the wretches burn forever.' Today we'd call such a man not a saint but a mass murderer, or an accomplice to mass murder. More was well executed, and it is only a shame that at the moment of his own quick death by beheading he was spared the agonies he had sought to inflict on other, better men.
Good British saint, Ms Paterson? You befoul all three words.
Neil L Inglis
4998 Battery Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA
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