Captain Matthew Flinders

• HS2 sank to new depths of desperation in the second episode of their BBC “documentary” about the graves they are desecrating.

It was the turn of tiny babies and workhouse mothers in Birmingham to have their bones exposed with relentless cheeriness and disregard on national television.

But not before we were shown the bones of Captain Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), a gentle cartographer venerated in Australia for his accurate and meticulous charting of the coastline as he was the first to circumnavigate the island continent (and for not eating his cat, Trim).

But we had to listen to an appalling fabrication of motives attributed to him of wanting to exploit the Georgian penal colony at the expense of the native population for the profit of the British Empire and his own aggrandisement.

Really there should be some historical check on trying to justify by sensationalisation of this dreadful exhumation of our dead by HS2. It is amazing that the academics are prepared to be associated with such indecency.

DOROTHEA HACKMAN,
NW1