The BibleLettersThe King James Bible and eternal copyright
Michael Gove and the government are making a gift of the King James Bible to every school in the UK (Report, 25 November) but continue to restrict how we use it. The crown has a perpetual copyright on the King James Bible, through "letters patent" originally issued to stop unofficial editions and then to protect the country from ranters, shakers, Quakers, nonconformity and popery. Thus today we can't freely reprint, circulate passages, write commentaries and draw upon the text in the way we might with other texts of the time, such as Shakespeare's plays. Bizarrely, these restrictions only apply in the UK. Gove could make a gift of the King James Bible to every UK citizen – with a simple legal change to revoke its perpetual copyright.
Jim Killock
Executive director, Open Rights Group
Michael Gove should send the King James Bible to local churches. They don't seem to have much use for it. They seem to prefer a variety of bland "more accurate" and "more in-touch" modern translations which have no poetry and destroy any common memory of significant passages, especially at Christmas.
Pamela Bridge
Southend-on-Sea, Essex
Secularists should rethink their oppposition to Michael Gove's scheme to send a new copy of the King James Bible to every school. What better way could there be to consign the living word to oblivion than to bury it in Jacobean-speak?
Very Rev Richard Giles
Tynemouth
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