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Prime Minister Gordon Brown listens to questions during his visit to Langside college in Glasgow, Scotland November 6, 2009.
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LONDON - Downing Street has defended the way the prime minister writes to bereaved families of dead soldiers after the mother of one serviceman accused Gordon Brown of insulting the memory of her son by misspelling his name in a condolence letter.
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She has described the hand-written letter as a "hastily scrawled insult" and urged him never to send such a letter to a soldier's family again.
Guardsman Jamie Janes, 20, of the 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards, was killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan, last month.
According to The Sun newspaper his mother Jacqui was angered when she received the prime minister's letter in which he appeared to misspell his name. The paper has reproduced the hand-written note.
She complained the letter was scrawled so quickly she could hardly read it and said some of the words were unfinished or incorrectly spelt.
"He couldn't even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry," she told the paper.
"I only got through the first four lines before I threw it across the room in disgust," she said.
She described the letter as disrespectful and an insult to her son's memory and the memory of all servicemen who have died while serving their country.
In a statement on Monday, Downing Street said Brown took a great deal of time writing personally to every family to acknowledge the debt of gratitude owed by the country.
It said he would never knowingly misspell anyone's name.
Brown has long suffered problems with his eyesight after a childhood rugby injury left him blind in one eye.
(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; Editing by Steve Addison)
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