Painful news

Those of us with soldier sons are accustomed to terrible news from the badlands of Middle East but former R & A Captain Sandy Dawson’s daughter died in a quiet café in Sydney.

Katrina, a barrister and mother of three young children, was gunned down while shielding a pregnant friend and colleague from a crazed Islamist gunman who should have been in jail.

I played golf with Sandy occasionally and he talked a lot about his two sons but it was clear that, as with many powerful men, the father-daughter bond was especially intense.

He will be utterly destroyed and such bleak anguish is best expressed in WH Auden’s poem:

“The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

(Rev Dr) John 
Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews

A horrendous amount of cruelty has been carried out this week in the name of religion.

It makes our little squabbles over gay and female ordination seem almost quaint.

LORRAINE REYNOLDS

Oswald Road

Edinburgh