IN his rather incoherent rant against the Harry Potter books (LT, August 14), Councillor Salim Mulla manages to ignore a fact which the various responses (LT, August 18) do not quite encapsulate.

This is a fact which has been normative for the whole of human history: imaginative, fictional' story-telling is the way in which we learn deep truths about ourselves.

What J K Rowling's world does is precisely to create a context within which children - and the child in the adult of the rest of us - may rediscover and reassert the reality of goodness, both human and divine.

The reason that the books are so popular is because they do this brilliantly as stories and they appear against the backdrop of a world where evil in so many different guises seems to hold the upper hand.

Faith traditions like Councillor Mulla's and my own have much in fact to learn from this.

If we rediscovered the inclusive narratives at the heart of our traditions rather than focusing so much energy expounding what are often, in reality such exclusive doctrines, we too might relearn the difference between good and evil.

CANON CHRIS CHIVERS, Canon Chancellor and Director of exChange, Blackburn Cathedral.