Letter: A tale ahead of its time

Sir: I was surprised to read Mark Lawson's contention that Andrew Davies has been 'gentle with George Eliot' over the subject of sex in his adaptation of Middlemarch. While George Eliot would probably not have disapproved of the invention of a bedroom scene for the episode relating to the Casaubons' honeymoon in Rome, as dialogue was eschewed and the underplayed performance was entirely true to the spirit of the novel, I am certain that she must be writhing in her grave at Highgate over the fourth episode.

There was absolutely no justification, beyond a desire to pander to the supposed lubricious tastes of television audiences, for Mr Davies' introduction of a titillating scene between Lydgate and Rosamond as they prepared for bed, and for the banal and vulgar 20th-century foreplay language that accompanied it, quite inappropriate for a Victorian novel.

Talk about subtlety] This was Edwina Currie's A Parliamentary Affair, not George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Yours faithfully,

R. W. BURGESS

Harvington, Worcestershire