Sir, The critics of the OUP quoted in your report today may well be correct as regards literature, though the evidence offered in the report is slight.

My own experience in another discipline, philosophy, is different. I have had reason to admire and to benefit from the meticulous rigour of academic readers invited by the OUP to vet my manuscripts. In this discipline, at least, there is reason to think that the academic standards of the OUP are at least as high, if not higher, than they were a generation ago. Verbal slips are annoying, but intellectual standards count for more.

Yours faithfully, PAUL HELM,
Department of Theology and Religious Studies,
King's College London, Strand, WC2R 2LS.
February 4.