A pupil won a national essay writing competition run by the University of Gloucestershire.

It was announced on Wednesday that Lewis Morey, 16, had won the half term competition with a prize of an iPad and publication in RE Today, the magazine for teachers of religious education.

The pupil of Forest School, in College Place, Snaresbrook, won the 2014 Religion, Philosophy and Ethics Essay Competitionm which was open to all A-Level pupils in the UK.

Lewis’s 1,500 word essay was titled: If you had a time machine, would it be wrong to travel back and kill Hitler?

In his conclusion, Lewis said: "In purely ethical terms it would indeed be unethical to kill Hitler as a child.

"Taking one life in order to save around 70 million is certainly morally acceptable, however if killing Hitler were avoidable, it would be entirely immoral to take his life at all.

"It would in fact be possible to simply take Hitler as a child to be brought up by another family on the other side of the world rather than taking such drastic measures as infanticide."