Sir – This letter should have been written last week but there is a wise saying ‘never write in anger, wait and you might feel differently’. Well, I have waited and feel exactly the same.

Christopher Gray’s article subtitled ‘reflects on his church work’ (not the usual interpretation of church work), (Gray Matter, February 26), is at first a strange piece complaining at length about the heinous crime of a broadsheet newspaper in publishing a letter which has already appeared in another paper. Do we mind ? Obviously the professional journalist does, but hardly a topic for the general reader.

Given that the subject of the offending letter was a rather affectionate story about Archbishop Ramsay and his driving, the dreaded bearded one proceeds by way of Peterborough and his connection with Cathedral matters to return to the Archbishop. Gray recounts how he drove (even giving us the make of his car) to Cuddesdon in 1977,  to try to extract from the Archbishop why he had changed his mind about staying in Oxford and was returning to Durham, a place where he had many connections. Dr Ramsay declined to expand on this decision in the way Gray hoped ‘leading one to suppose there was some hidden motive for his departure’.

Dr Ramsay was in his retirement so his change of mind did not involve any professional matter. What Gray fails to realise is that a man of Dr Ramsay’s standing, background and saintliness would feel under no obligation at all to discuss his private life with a passing reporter. In the world he inhabited and the period he came from, this was not required or considered suitable.

For Gray to turn this discretion into something suspicious is an appalling slur on the memory of one of the most eminent churchmen we have ever had.

Glena Chadwick, Charlbury