Charlton Heston was a defender of individual choice

Published: 5 March 2010

• IT is a pity that in his review of the latest Michael Moore film Capitalism: A Love Story, your film critic (Review, February 26) had to resort to gratuitous insults against the Oscar-winning film actor Charlton Heston in his role as head of the National Rifle Association.
To refer to this fierce defender of individual choice in a country that enshrined the right of its citizens to bear arms as a “poor deluded old fool” and a “stupid old coot” is particularly unfortunate when one remembers that the actor was dead of Alzheimer’s disease within a few years and was probably already in its incipient grip when faced with Michael Moore.
If you want to get some idea of the measure of Heston as a man, it is worth finding his family website and reading his goodbye to his public. 
Not a sign of self-pity or arrogance, but gracious appreciation, thanks and farewell.
It brought tears to my eyes.
In his role with the NRA, Heston represented and defended the rights of those who could be threatened by the less law-abiding and their lives and freedoms criminally curtailed.
He was too easy a target when Moore arrived to question him – no doubt with the former’s generous agreement, it should be noted – and in retrospect, is thoroughly undeserving of your critic’s cruel and mean-spirited jibes.
MARK NEWBERRY
Harcourt Street, W1