Top dogs
Sir: I very much enjoyed the excerpts from Dean Spanley (The Spectator’s Notes, 8 January). Hitherto my favourite depiction of the canine mindset had come from Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome:
Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.
Anyone who has ever attempted to shift a beloved pet from underfoot while cooking is surely familiar with such an attitude.
I am sure other readers will have their own favourites.
Kate Baxter
Etchingham, East Sussex
Sir: Charles Moore’s enjoyment of Lord Dunsany’s book Dean Spanley might be increased even more by watching the ‘utterly original’ DVD. Although Peter O’Toole is rated as the star of the film, Sam Neil’s dogged portrayal of the canine-deluded clergyman is unforgettable and as barking mad as one could imagine.
Robert Vincent Wildhern, Hampshire
A long, withdrawing roar
Sir: In seeking to convict me of a ‘howling error’, Nick Spencer (Letters, 8 January), misrepresents my position. I did indeed argue that astronomy and geology had undermined Christianity, but I was not basing that claim on the faith-versus-science debates in the 19th century. My point is broader and simpler. At the end of the middle ages, an educated Christian would have believed that God had created the Heavens and the Earth in order to provide a moral playing-field for mankind. Over the next few centuries, astronomy and geology subverted those simplicities. Although it would be impossible to establish a quantitative relationship between the rise of science and the erosion of faith, the causal connection is self-evident.
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