Your correspondent G Duncan (Let's hope circus returns to island', Letters June 9) asks if Paulo's Circus was the first to visit the island.

As a young child I lived in Victoria Square and I can remember Lord George Sangers Circus and menagerie visiting Portland in the early 1950s.

The big top was sited in the playing field next to the Masonic Hall in Victoria Square. The playing field was much bigger then.

The star attraction was the lions and the lion tamer and I remember my friends and I spending our time looking at the lions in their cages. The whole show was quite a spectacle.

Richard Ashe, Duchy Close, Dorchester.