I WAS very interested to read the article 'A long line back to home' (Hereford Times, November 27), concerning the late Sir Frederick John Burrows who died in 1973.

I do, however, take issue with one item in the article. The late Labour MP for Derby (my home city) was also a former railwayman and NUR trade unionist who became a Cabinet minister. He was Jimmy Thomas. It was he, not Sir Frederick, who first used the phrase "I have devoted more of my life to shunting and hooting than hunting and shooting."

No doubt Sir Frederick recalled this when speaking in Calcutta to the amusement of his audience, but he was not being original in the use of this witty epithet.

CHRISTOPHER SHORT Aberystwyth Crescent, Barry