'I LIKE it when you give us articles about funny goings on in the Church of England, but why do you keep writing about terrorism?"

A reader wrote those words to me this week. It would be a fool of a writer who ignored the views of his readers, but the fact is that the writer sometimes has no choice about what he writes.

I don't mean to suggest that the Editor tells me what to put in my column every Tuesday and, believe me, I like to try to write something cheerful, and even amusing.

But a columnist must live in the real world. This means that he is not at liberty to write about something merely frivolous when he sees real and imminent danger.

So I think I have to start today by quoting an official from the Ministry of Defence: "We know from documents found in Kabul, and from the laboratory in the cave, that Osama bin Laden has acquired a chemical and biological weapons capability. He would also like a radiological dispersal system - a dirty nuclear bomb. We have been surprised by what we have found. They have got much further down the road towards weapons of mass destruction than we expected. It's very worrying. I am utterly amazed that we have not had a major attack since September 11."

It's not easy for me, in the light of that sort of warning, to use the column to tell you a few funny stories about silly vicars. So far as terror attacks go, things have been fairly quiet since last autumn - except, of course, for the Israelis who have been plagued by suicide bombers, or for the Christians who were murdered last week at morning service in their church in Pakistan. More and more western politicians are making speeches critical of President Bush and Tony Blair's war on terrorism. The newspapers have begun to air their doubts. I have just one question for these critics and doubters: do you imagine that the threat of further attacks has gone away?

Remember this: the attacks on September 11 came as a complete shock to most of us. It seemed an ordinary Tuesday. It began, so it appeared, with everything in its usual place. It ended with the centre of New York destroyed and thousands of innocent people murdered. Do these opportunist fools among the politicians and their supporters in the mass media really suppose that al Qaida will give us a warning next time?

There will be no warning next time, as there was no warning last time. What will the gibbering appeasers in the chattering classes and on the BBC say then? Well, of course - and assuming that Broadcasting House and Hampstead escape the carnage - they will no doubt say that we ought to have been better prepared, that we ought to have taken stern measures much earlier to prevent an attack.

It gives me no pleasure to write these things. I'd far rather tell you some funny stories about cack-handed clergymen. But when the next terrorist attack comes, I don't want to face sitting down to see that, on the very day some western city was wiped off the map, I'd written something trivial about a loony diocesan "initiative" on monuments in graveyards.

Published: 26/03/2002