Bloody waste of time

I've had quite a few letters printed in the London Review of Books, though the one time they comissioned an article from me they changed their mind and never printed it. I've not had a letter printed since I moved abroad, quite likely for that very reason: by the time I actually recieve the magazine they've probably already had all the letters they want, from British readers or from overseas subscribers who read it on the internet. I don't: it hurts my eyes.

That's the way it goes. The latest issue contains a rather overlong and splenetic letter from Edward Pearce attacking a piece by Eamon Duffy defending (to a degree) the régime of Bloody Mary. Perhaps they should have waited for mine: it made a better point in a rather shorter fashion.

Dear LRB

In his lecture on the religious executions of the Marian Church Eamon Duffy writes, first, that "this was the most intense religious persecution anywhere in 16th-century Europe" and second, that "the case can be made that made that in 16th-century terms the burnings were inevitable". He does not, regrettably, explain how these apparently contradictory claims can be reconciled.

Yours

ejh