Sir, From the flock of letters contesting my views on Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, may I pluck three for comment and close down my end of this controversy?
Bob Quinn seems to write a spiteful letter (October 31st) about me every seven years - the last one begrudged me any credit for Mary Robinson's campaign. This time, he tells us he finds Jordan's critique of my screenplay "scholarly".
Stan O'Brien takes a lot of space (November 1st) to tell us that he met a man who said he saw a Lewis gun in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday. There is no contemporary evidence to support this. Had there been any kind of machine gun, Erskine Childers, the brilliant editor of the IRA's Irish Bulletin, would have amplified it into a major atrocity. But the Bulletin makes no such charge in its account of the shootings.
Aine Broy writes to correct my "inaccuracy" (November 1st) in saying her father, Ned Broy, was from Dublin instead of Kildare. Was that worth a stamp? My point was that he was a southerner, not a northerner. And why did she not write to correct a real inaccuracy - the well publicised fact that Jordan bumps off her father in 1920 in the film, when in reality; Ned Broy went on to become a distinguished Garda chief?
Finally, can we end these boring exchanges about "inaccuracies", as if Jordan had made inadvertent mistakes in his movie? Historians, who have seen it agree he distorts' historical facts. Since Jordan is not stupid, these distortions are deliberate. And I have no problem with that provided (a) he stops claiming his movie is history, (by comes clean about the political and artistic agenda which motivates these distortions. - Yours etc.,
Trafalgar Terrace,
Monkstown,
Co. Dublin.