From Mr Richard Willmott
Sir, — I enjoyed Canon Adrian Leak’s account of John Milton (Features, 30 May), but I should like to challenge the reservations about Milton’s greatest work hinted at in your headline “England’s wannabe Homer”.

Canon Leak rightly says that many people today are put off by Paradise Lost, but fails to draw attention to two qualities of that poem which could make it enormously attractive if only readers would take the plunge.

The first is the sound of the verse: once you read it aloud, or listen to it, the apparent difficulties of the syntax thrown up by silent reading melt away, while the drama and pathos, the variety and sheer exhilaration, of the poetry emerge.

Second, the poem surprises at times by its sheer modernity. What better account is there in any novel of how to manipulate a committee meeting than that in Book Two, when Satan gets his own way at the “great consult” of the fallen angels in hell?

There is a third point: Paradise Lost, like all great texts, and supremely the scriptures, stimulates thought and inspires endless re-readings. Milton really was England’s Homer.
RICHARD WILLMOTT
37 Hafod Road
Hereford HR1 1SQ