I was appalled by the tendentious and inaccurate attack by Peter Allen on the Queen for wearing a fur coat during her state visit to Canada (Letters, October 12).

To me, this typifies the bile so often expressed by this country's emerging "thought police", who vilify someone for an opinion expressed or an action taken at variance with their own self-imposed set of politically-correct attitudes.

First of all, the Queen was not visiting Montreal, as Mr Allen inaccurately states, but Winnipeg. This city likes to boast it is colder than Moscow.

The Queen was left freezing when the water-taxi taking her from one bank of the Red River to the other broke down, leaving her and the party, which included the Duke of Edinburgh (age 81), drifting around in freezing conditions.

This escapade had been preceded by 30 minutes of sitting on a dais on the banks of the river watching a somewhat inane programme of singing and dancing.

When, eventually, Her Majesty was rescued from the water-taxi, someone thoughtfully loaned her a fur coat with which to warm up. That was all.

But this act of kindness to an old lady shivering in the cold is enough to rouse the ire of the likes of Mr Allen.

As a Canadian now living in this country, I am deeply upset by the torrent of abuse directed at the Queen and Prince Philip, especially as, in this case, it is founded on a complete misrepresentation of what actually happened.

But then, we mustn't worry too much about the facts, must we, Mr Allen?

-Mrs Ruby Fleming, Belsize Road, Worthing