Sir – I enjoyed Chris Koenig’s article Destroying ideas remains hot topic, (Past Times, September 23) on the organised burning of Milton’s work in the Bod’s Old Schools Quad in the 17th century.

After reading this informative piece, I also stumbled across a connected fact in the book Oxford Student Pranks which states that originally the plan had been to burn Milton himself in Oxford, but the assembled students were disappointed to learn that Milton was “unavailable”. One can imagine his apologies being read out!

Matt Ledbury, Oxford