Madam, - Ruth Dudley Edwards writes in a book review that the "common Ulster Protestant view" that Catholics are "slothful, dishonest and untrustworthy. . .sexually irresponsible and fritter away their earnings on gambling, smoking and alcohol" is "not unfounded".

While it is depressing, but not surprising, that there are still people who cling to such stereotypes, whatever about the need they feel to express them so publicly, it is astonishing that your paper should publish such opinions. There are many words I could use to describe the propagators of such twaddle but, up until now, I thought that nobody would dare publish them as they might be offensive. Now, it seems, all I have to do is include them in a book review. - Yours, etc,

Dr COLM HENRY, Lovers Walk, Cork.