3 NOVEMBER 2007, Page 23

Sex scandals overlooked

Sir: Paul Bew's generous and perceptive review of my Luck and the Irish (Books, 20 October) gently chides me for inaccurately stating that Vincent Twomey's book The End of Irish Catholicism? never mentions sexual scandals. But the single passage Professor Bew quotes from page 33 refers specifically and solely to the abusive conditions in industrial schools run by religious orders. Rapist priests and the secret families fathered by leading Catholic churchmen go unmentioned in the book, despite its title and its recent date of publication (2003).

Roy Foster Hertford College, Oxford