MRS L SMITH'S remarks in "It's in the Book" (Letters, September 1) were surprising - when, if she is an avid reader of it, she doesn't understand that the Bible also contains references to people who are "without sin casting the first stone.".

Personally, I think the Bible - a collection of everything from poetry to history - was only intended as a reference to human relationships and not a book set in rigid format

These two Sunday school teachers who said that if she had not repented, Princess Diana would have gone to hell, in interpreting the scriptures that way they did, must also have realised - and, in my view, it was their intention - that they would be courting controversy, argument and publicity. And it worked. Princess Diana, whom these teachers used as a means to an end, was, as Mrs Smith says, no angel, but her legacy was to leave two sons behind whose strength, courage and steadfastness has ensured that William will be the kind of future monarch that republicans will find hard to sack or easily undermine.

In the Gospel of St Matthew it says that it's the sick who need a physician, not the healthy.

What Diana left behind was healthy. Can the same be said for the legacy of those two holier-than-thou Sunday school teachers?

DUNCAN McVEE, Robin Bank Road, Darwen.

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