Tin ear
Sir: Sir John Weston (Letters, 15 March) deplores Westminster Abbey’s refusal to allow the use of the King James Bible at a memorial service, and asks if it is now officially banished in London. Things are far worse than that. Many parish churches, and the chapels in cemeteries across the land, do not allow the option at all, having only modern translations on the premises, together with ‘Common Worship’ or a scruffy leaflet giving what passes for the burial service in modern English. If you’re very lucky, there may also be a few almost unrecognisable fragments of what is called the ‘Traditional Words’.
When the bereaved have specified emphatically that they wish to commemorate their departed with the Authorised Version and the Book of Common Prayer it is an affront to them, not to mention to the memory of the deceased, to insist on garbled and tin-eared translations of some of the greatest prose in the language, which by virtue of its quality as prose (quite apart from its validity as the word of God) is for many a real aid to meditation and consolation.
When will the Church wake up to its mistake, which is both philistine and deeply insensitive?
Andrew Wilton
London SW11
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