Letter: Cranmer drama

Sir: Andreas Whittam Smith writes that the sufferings of Archbishop Cranmer cry out for the pen of a playwright ("The seductive appeal of the Tudors' cruel kingdom", 5 October). The play which followed Murder in the Cathedral in the Canterbury Festival was Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury by Charles Williams. And in the tercentenary of Cranmer's death Frank Windsor enacted Cranmer's final recantation in St Mary's, Oxford, on the spot where he stood to make it. I was commissioned by the Vicar of St Mary's to write the play, and it has been revived three times; but, alas, Charles Williams's remarkable play has only been staged again in America: it is high time for a revival.

ANNE RIDLER

Oxford