I was interested to read Miranda Heneghan’s article on Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics (“Give peas a chance”, Tablet Traveller, 20 June). In 1990, shortly after the downfall of Communism, I visited Blanka, a Czech friend in Brno. In recent times, parts of St Thomas’s Abbey have been converted into offices. The one occupied by Blanka, a patent agent, overlooked the very plot in the garden that was used by Mendel to plant his peas. Having lived through the Communist years in her country, Blanka was very proud of the fact that she and her family were now able to live a life free from oppression.The abbey’s large statue of Mendel has its own interesting story. It used to stand in a prominent position in Brno. When the Communists took control of the t