Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Canon Michael Bourdeaux writes: Your obituary and reports on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Aug 5) contain many insights marking the passing of one of the towering figures of the second half of the 20th century. Neither the obituary nor D. M. Thomas’s assessment mentions Solzhenitsyn’s last visit to the UK. He came to accept the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in May 1983. Archbishop Robert Runcie invited me to help to host Solzhenitsyn at a private dinner at Lambeth Palace the previous night; his magnificent speech the next day proved the depth of his Christian discernment and commitment. To his friends he was outgoing, far from the conventional picture of a man walled behind the barricade he built himself in Cavendish, Vermont. When I was awarded the Templeton Prize the following year, Solzhenitsyn wrote me the warmest possible letter from that address on the very day the announcement was made. Your obituarist did not mention the origin of the name of his seminal work, The Gulag Archipelago. Its genesis was his study of the once-great Solovki Monastery in the Russian Arctic, which became a prison camp as early as 1918. Solzhenitsyn considered this tragic place to be the paradigm of the whole Gulag system; the monastic lands were spread over several islands, so he transferred the image to the prison camps spread over remote areas of the Soviet Union.

Kenneth Chew

Peter Adamson writes: Your obituary of Kenneth Chew (July 30) reminds me of his practical response to youthful inquiry.

When I arrived as a young student at Imperial College in 1964, I attended lectures just across the road from the Science Museum, in what was then the Huxley Building. I also had a particular interest in exploring the history of sound recording.

I therefore spent many a spare moment with my nose up against the glass cases containing various talking machines, and hoped to learn more from a Science Museum lecture on the subject — alas, it was cancelled at the last minute. Seeing my disappointment, one of the attendants arranged for me to meet Chew, who promptly got one of his colleagues to give me a personal demonstration of several of the gramophones and phonographs in the gallery. It was an act of kindness that I still remember with gratitude.