24 FEBRUARY 1979, Page 17

Down Mexico way

Sir: Mr Peter Nichols writes (3 February): 'Readers of Mr Graham Greene will have no difficulty in recalling that the last priest left alive in Mexico was knocking on a door at the end of The Power and the Glory.'

I hope they will have great difficulty in recalling what I never wrote. My novel was not a fantasy of the future: it was based on the real situation in one state (Tabasco) of Mexico in what was then the recent past. z There have always been plenty of priests in Mexico, but in 1938 there was no priest or church left in Tabasco. I was optimistic enough to describe the return of a priest to Villahermosa coming probably from Mexico City.

Graham Greene

Antibes