You either marvelled at an Ally Brown innings or tut-tutted with those who

You either marvelled at an Ally Brown innings or tut-tutted with those who felt it could not last.Unfortunately for Brown, Grahame Clinton, his coach at Surrey last year, appeared to fall among the latter Clinton dropped Brown after a drawn game against Glamorgan. A similar station at Ashchurch necessarily involves Railtrack and the price has doubled to pounds 1m. It was due to open last year but construction has not yet begun.As local government funds are severely limited this hike in costs will mean fewer stations are built.DR CLIVE MOWFORTHSpokesmanCoaley Junction Action CommitteeDursley, Gloucestershire. Sir: I may be able to equal the Rev Christopher Martin's story (letter, 19 May). In 1956 I accompanied my father, a solicitor, to see a client, Alexander White, in Winchelsea. My father told me on the way there that the client was an elderly gentleman, then in his mid-eighties, whose father was 72 when he was born, so that his father had been born in the opening years of the 19th century. I asked Mr White what was the earliest recollection of his father.

To my astonishment Mr White proceeded to tell me how his father had described to him the homecoming of the soldiers after their victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. DAVID ASHTONSevenoaks,Kent. The eccentric author Alice Thomas Ellis was the only Roman Catholic invited by Radio 4's Today programme to comment yesterday on the appointment of the new Archbishop of Liverpool. Given the outrage this traditionalist writer has provoked with her rebarbative criticisms of the previous incumbent, the late Derek Worlock (whom she dismissed as a disastrous progressive), it was an uncharacteristic lapse of judgement to broadcast her views unchallenged. But it was an illuminating insight into the extent to which the media have fallen for the bogus notion that the Catholic Church here is riven by a civil war between conservatives and progressives. The appointment yesterday of Patrick Kelly, Bishop of Salford, to the Liverpool post reflects a different reality. Intriguingly, Dr Kelly had immediately been dubbed a "conservative" by the media. Presenters on Radio Merseyside even began to ask whether the appointment was a rebuke by Rome.

Nothing could be further from the truth.Certainly the new archbishop is doctrinally orthodox. But then so was Derek Worlock; you don't get to be a Catholic bishop in the UK without playing by the rules. Certainly he is a traditionalist, but one who, in the words of a senior theologian, "believes in a living tradition which is in touch with the reality of the world around it".Dr Kelly's Salford diocese has, under his tutelage, enthusiastically embraced ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and new methods of religious education, all of which are anathema to Alice Thomas Ellis's incense and Latin brigade. It has also taken to the social justice agenda which the Pope insists is central to modern Catholicism. In Salford Patrick Kelly's public pronouncements have included denunciations of the impact on the poor of the Government's confused handling of the economy, of the privatisation of prisons, of the lack of progress in converting the arms industry to other uses, and of the neglect of the Third World in general election manifestos.He has been in charge of the English bishops' foreign affairs policy. He also flew to Singapore to defend members of its Justice and Peace Commission against charges of subversion and to testify that their actions were in line with Catholic social teaching. He has protested personally to the French ambassador over nuclear tests in the Pacific and has travelled widely in Latin America, to which he posted Salford diocesan priests.Yet no one has accused his social action of being politically rather than theologically grounded.

A scholar who reads the New Testament in Greek, he is considered to be an able theologian. He taught dogmatic theology at the seminary at Oscott of which he was rector and was secretary to the Bishops' Theology Conference.It is learning worn lightly. Warm, kindly, authentic, holy but down to earth are the epithets used of him. The files of the Catholic press are full of photographs of him with children, the handicapped and the elderly. He has a touch of the cheery chappie which Liverpool will love. His first Salford diocesan year book pictured him on the cover not in episcopal regalia but in his shirtsleeves.