WILLIAM Thom goes too far in his letter about bloodsports, particularly hunting with hounds. (Letters, January 25)

His library, ("a quick look around my shelves") he tells us, reveals that literature is on the side of hunting.

If your shelves contain the works of Surtees, Sassoon, Trollope, Somerville and Ross etc etc, this is not surprising, as these people are famous authors of works in praise of hunting.

I do feel Mr Thom stretches literary assumption a little far however by branding Shakespeare as a hunt supporter.

This is particularly wrong as the appalling activity of foxhunting was so rare as to be virtually non-existent in Shakespeare's day.

At that time it had only been taken up by noblemen who had emptied their woods of deer by hunting them to oblivion.

It was another couple of hundred years before the barbaric practice of foxhunting became de rigeur for idle, cruel and stupid people.

Shamefully we are still witnessing this savagery in our countryside, still, in my view, carried out by similar types.

Had Mr Thom the compassion and imagination to try reading artist and naturalist Eileen Soper, or the lyrical and haunting Mary Webb (particularly "Gone to Earth"), or Eric Ashby's "My Life with Foxes", or indeed the pastoral genius of Thomas Hardy (not a word against the fox or in favour of the bloodsports brutes), he could perhaps admit that his narrow view of the countryside as an attractive sports arena for killing animals by insensitive and/or sadistic thugs was hardly an widespread literary perception.

Penny Little

Great Haseley

Oxfordshire

February 14, 2002 13:38