It was never very clear to me why it was that a memorial rose was planted in a small provincial English town in a nominally Christian country, to honour the memory of a German Jewish girl captured in Holland and murdered by the Nazis, 60 years after the event.

Even more surprising was the fact that it was planted in a dark and overgrown patch in Tower Gardens where it would not grow, still less thrive. It was a weak and spindly thing, anyway.

It is now completely dead and the cheap little plaque in front of it is illegible. No one has made the slightest attempt to tend to it over the last year.

Anne Frank’s memorial is her diary, and it will be read for evermore.

As we approah the anniversary of the last entry in it (August 1. 1944), cannot the good people of York, who feel the need to mark her tragic life, find a more intelligent and dignified way of doing so?

Mark Grenyer, South Esplanade, York.