Sir,

I read with no great interest, but with some amusement, and a certain amount of concern, the letter from Mr. Stephen Beesley about all those plaques in general, and one for Haile Selassie in particular. It would be a pity if this nonsense about the Emperor of Ethiopia having lived on Caldey should ever be taken as gospel, along with some of the other stupid stories told about the place over the years, such as the 30 houses of William of Worcester in the 15th century, a German spy during the First World War, and the more recent ideas of all the springs of water bubbling up from the ground.

The Emperor of Ethiopia did not come anywhere near Caldey. He was invited there by a Mrs. Consuelo King, who was living on the island in the 1930s, and who, with the collusion of an eventually discredited reporter, the late J. C. Griffith Jones, made life as difficult as she could for the recently arrived Cistercian community and caused them great distress. She was known for her habit of trying to cultivate people, including an invitation to the aviator Amy Johnson, who was at Pendine at the time, to fly one of her small aeroplanes to the island and land on the field by the lighthouse.

Her invitation to Haile Selassie had been issued without the knowledge or authority of the monastic community who, because of the political situation at the time, insisted that they would not give their permission. The details, written in French, are recorded in the private journal kept at the time by one of the monks, and to which I was privileged to have access when I was researching my two books, 'Total Community' (1975) and 'Caldey' (1984).

The Tenby harbour community will be able to tell Mr. Beesley the identity of the notorious member of that brotherhood who put the story about concerning the walking of the cheetah on the South Beach, but I would hope that even he would check on that bit of nonsense before quoting it as fact.

Roscoe Howells,

Amroth.