Letter: History of an Oxford bursar

WITH reference to your article "The judge, the bursar and the wronged policeman" (21 June), I would like to make two points.

First, I made no false claims to honours or high office when I took up my post: although your reporter's informant may have provided the carelessly assembled college magazine article in which this story has its origins, s/he clearly failed to provide its subsequent apology.

Second, regarding the reported claim for compensation made by a former police subordinate of mine, PC Gordon Warren, whom I am said to have declared mentally ill. Once again, the informant has failed to give the correct details: the diagnosis was made by the Chief Medical Officer at Scotland Yard; it is a matter of record that the High Court made an award of compensation against the Metropolitan Police.

Geoffrey Bourne-Taylor

St Edmund Hall

Oxford