Visitor does work

The Oxbridge visitor system can work very well indeed (Letters, THES, September 10). I asked my Cambridge college to provide a form of Grace acceptable to non-Christians. This caused some difficulty and the request was brusquely rejected. When I threatened to invoke the Crown as visitor, the bigots folded and an accommodation was promptly obtained. The crucial element perhaps was that the powers of the Crown were exercised to my knowledge by the Lord Chancellor. His office is, it seems, happy to exercise the powers concerned, as they put it, "without troubling the Palace".

Anthony Beck

London SW6