Letter: Allegory and the Potter's tale

Sir: Dennis Potter: a private man who turned personal, sometimes religious, preoccupations into an art of Shakespearean dimension: your obituary writers said it, but not with Keats' thought-provoking concentration:

A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures, figurative - which such people can no more make out than they can the hebrew Bible . . . Shakspeare (sic) led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it - (The Letters of John Keats, ed M. B. Forman, Oxford, 1947).

Yours sincerely,

CHRISTOPHER THOMSON

Reigate, Surrey

8 June