I've no wish to topple Richard Cockle Lucas's statue of Isaac Watts.

What does need replacing is the false image it conveys of Watts as only an elderly hymn-writer.

Marilyn Madigan (Echo 29 June) calls the BLM generation a cult.

But they have exactly the qualities ascribed to Watts by his American biographer:

"He planned his work in the ardour of youth - in its singleness of conviction, in its preference of radical remedies over compromise."

Lucas's statue ignores Isaac's thwarted wish to share his life with Thomas Gunston; his homo-erotic epic poem "The Dacian Battle" (praised by Samuel Johnson); and his admiration for Charles Wesley's very carnal hymn 'Wrestling Jacob'.

So it's not a question of current beliefs versus "ages past" .

Some 17th and 18th century people thought like persons today. Their voices have been ignored, but they deserve to be heard.

Adrian Risdon

Winchester