The house called Skerryvore was destroyed in an air raid in 1940 and the site is

The house called Skerryvore was destroyed in an air raid in 1940 and the site is now a memorial garden .'You can see why Bird and Modlock are a bit miffed. While living in Bournemouth he wrote Kidnapped, with his mind on Mull and the Scottish Highlands, and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he was already a sick man and any local travelling went unrecorded, though some scenes from The Wrong Box were set in the New Forest. Alas, they do not always get the answers they want.'It is said that the pine woods reminded Stevenson of Scotland, and the sunny summertime Channel recalled the Mediterranean, but the truth seems to be that local landscapes made little impression on him. The authors of the book, Eric Bird and Lilian Modlock, have gone round the coast of Britain from Dorset to Bristol, fiercely searching out any writers who have been that way and standing them up against the wall for questioning.Hardy, Betjeman, Powys, Kingsley, du Maurier - all these, of course, are high on the list of south-western suspects; but occasionally foreign bodies will swim into Bird and Modlock's net, such as Verlaine and Stevenson.

It was effort wasted as far as the English are concerned.I have gleaned all this information from a book called Writers on the South-West Coast, a handsome and highly enjoyable literary ramble round the West Country, newly published by Ex Libris Press in Bradford-on-Avon. But we tend to ignore foreign writers who come and set up house here. French writers, for instance, have come and gone from our shores repeatedly, but you wouldn't know it from the local guides. Rimbaud, Verlaine, Alain-Fournier and many others spent time in England, but I have never spotted the blue plaques outside their rented accommodation.Bournemouth was the residence not just of Stevenson, but also of Paul Verlaine, who even wrote a poem called 'Bournemouth' Anyone in the class ever read it? Hands up No, I thought not. The fact is that we English are pretty good at celebrating our own writers and their locale, and turning them into tourist attractions (Come to Hardy's Wessex] Visit James Herriott country] Join a coach tour of Jilly Cooper's Adulterous Home Counties]). However, there doesn't seem to have been much celebration in Bournemouth, despite the fact that Stevenson lived in the town for three years (1884-87) and wrote some of his most famous books there. If the bunting was out for Robert Louis Stevenson, and spontaneous Scottish reel parties broke out in the streets of Bournemouth, I failed to notice If so, I apologise.

There was a lot of excitement during the Edinburgh Festival this year about the centenary of Robert Louis Stevenson's death, and maybe there was a lot of excitement, too, in Samoa and all the other places he lived. It's a mystery to us how the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, who are supporters of much of the Commission's findings, can at the same time support the Gatt, the very mechanism that will render the former's aims largely unattainable.Yours sincerely, COLIN HINES TIM LANG Twickenham, Middlesex. Social expenditure, however worthy, is being squeezed in countries all over the world in their pursuit of international competitiveness. This situation will worsen if and when the Gatt Uruguay Round is ratified, with its further reduction in countries' abilities to protect themselves against these global trends. This will leave us with neither the jobs nor sufficient revenue to pay for its suggested changes.

What it fails to recognise is that in today's globalised economy there is cheap labour, but highly skilled workforces, in countries such as India, China and some Asian Tigers that are likely increasingly to dominate such markets. It pins its hopes on investing in people by generating enough money from a high productivity, competitive-traded sector. Sir: Although many of the Commission on Social Justice's reported aims and policy suggestions are laudable, it suffers from one serious flaw. Experience suggests that stirring up controversy over immunisation costs lives Responsible teachers and churchmen should avoid doing so.. The school may also be making more abortions necessary, by increasing the number of unborn children exposed to rubella by the same route.Legally, of course, the school's headmaster is entitled to pull Ampleforth boys out of the public vaccination programme. One point alone, though, ought to convince him that he has made a mistake. Whatever his arguments, there is a risk that the publicity surrounding his letter will do great harm to the broader immunisation programme, as less informed people decide to deny their children protection for the wrong reasons.

Although the illness poses less danger to teenage boys than to pregnant women and their unborn children, there is always a risk that unvaccinated Ampleforth pupils may unwittingly transmit the virus. The underlying reality is that vaccination against rubella has saved, and will probably continue to save, many lives. Some say that since the foetus in question was aborted to save the life of the mother, the church would not have objected. What is more, Fr Chamberlain's view that parents may administer the vaccine to his pupils' sisters shows a recognition that morality alone cannot decide the matter. But many Catholic theologians doubt how to apply this principle to the rubella issue. The argument for Fr Chamberlain's position must be that it is wrong to derive benefit from an immoral action, no matter how far removed the benefit is from the action.