CREULTY WITHOUT BEAUTY

LETTER:

How simply splendid to see the rubicund figure of John Pickering, soaring over stone walls or guffawing with glee at Lady Molly's ball. Here is a hero for these drab and politically correct times, a man unafraid to take a dram or two of midnight cheer, a man prepared to risk his neck high galloping across God's own Galway. But not a man, I would have thought from looking at Seamus Murphy's evocative photographs, able still to approach the "true sacred monster" that is Lady Molly Cusack Smith "on bended knee and with head bowed". Both his chins and stomach would get in the way.

melissa freeman

Shrewsbury, Shropshire