THE letter from Mandep Sohal Rice (Your Letters, June 3) must be one of the most bizarre ever published by the Gazette.

If we are meant to take it at all seriously, then mild sympathy might be expressed for the distress the Priory's Sunday bells cause him (I wonder if he is also disturbed by the daily assault on his hearing by the birds' dawn chorus?).

However, the tone and content of the letter suggest the complaint is much more about what is preposterously referred to as "religious imperialism" than it is about lost sleep.

Christianity has been the religion of this country for many centuries and as recently as 2001, the national census recorded that well over 70 per cent of people living in the Malvern Hills area described themselves as Christian.

Church bells may not be music to everybody and many people who describe themselves as Christian do not attend church regularly but, whether your correspondent likes it or not, Christianity has been fundamental to the making of Britain and, not least, Malvern, helping to shape a place to live which, perhaps, he otherwise values and enjoys.

The Christian religion continues to be a vital, if diminished, part of the spiritual and moral fabric of this country. No amount of repetition of the mantras of "multiculturalism" can alter this.

Tolerance is also an essential part of the Western tradition to which Britain belongs, something else that is worth bearing in mind before indulging in tactless and wholly misplaced indignation about a long-standing church practice and tradition.

Eric H Jones (Dr.), Bamford Close, Guarlford.