Letter: Thackeray revisited - and rewritten

IT'S DIFFICULT, I'm sure, but Andrew Davies (Culture, 15 November) goes too far in cutting the line "I don't like the colour sir" in order to retain our sympathy for George Osborne's choice of love over money when he declines to marry "the woolly headed mulatto from St Kitt's".

Would he think it acceptable to cut it from a reprint of the novel before publication? Would he launder Shakespeare clean of anti-Semitism in case attitudes to Jews in 16th-century Venice might be seen as offensive now?

The attempt to manipulate our sympathies, rather than give us credit for pondering the context of the novel's events, is unwarranted. I thought Davies was adapting Thackeray, not rewriting him.

JULIE GREENAN

Shipley, West Yorkshire