Re­sponse to Noel Kalicha­ran's let­ter head­ed "Please, who wrote Por­trait of Trinidad," in yes­ter­day's Guardian: Len Ward, aka the Mighty Pen­man, com­pos­er of a Por­trait of Trinidad, is dead. He died some months ago and I on­ly found out af­ter the fact.

Some­time back in the 1980s, I lis­tened to ca­lyp­so con­nois­seur the late Rocky Mc­Collin open­ly de­bate the sub­ject mat­ter and from the ev­i­dence ex­pressed I came to the con­clu­sion that Len Ward is in­deed the said com­pos­er of the all-time clas­sic.

Maybe my trust­wor­thy col­leagues, George Ma­haraj, Den­nis "Spran­galang" Hall, Ted­dy Pin­heiro etc, can en­light­en us on this mat­ter?

Shawn Ran­doo

Via e-mail