Opinion on absent father's grandparents

Hi,

I'm new here - I've had a look on the site but can't find quite the right advice/opinions for my situation.

I have a 6 year old daughter; her father and I split up when she was 8 months old due to him having an affair. He then moved to America to live with the other woman (he had met her out there on a work trip). He got back in touch when C____ was 3 saying he wanted to support us and that he was "trying to be more of a grown up now", and that he wanted to see her when he was in London on business, skype and email regularly etc. He stuck to it for a little while but within a year he had gone awol again. He eventually said a year ago that he doesn't want to be a dad to our daughter as it plays on his mind and then he can't concentrate on his work, and he doesn't want to fail at his job and then resent her for ruining his career! He said he'd maybe like to pick things up when she's older...So that's that relationship done.

His parents have only met her about 10 times at the most, but the grandmother sends comics from time to time and a tonne of sweets with them. (Grrr!)

I stopped talking to the grandmother after J______ said he didn't want to be a father to C____ any more, as the way I saw it was that the more C___ saw her grandmother, the more she would be reminded of her dad and it would be painful. And given that they only see her once or twice a year it wasn't really a massive thing. I also realised that she was sending pictures of C____ to him and forwarding my emails about her (how she was getting on at school etc) to him, as he told me he had seen pictures etc, which really annoyed me as he made his choice and I found that to be really deviant of her.

Now then, last week I read that it's important for a child with an absent parent to be able to talk about him as much as they want to and to have memories of him etc. So when C___ mentioned him the other day, I sat down with her and told her she could always ask about him and we could talk about him as much as she wanted. I then showed her photos of her as a baby, in his arms, videos of them together etc. Apparently it's very important for them to know where they have come from and to only see the absent parent in a good light. Typical ;-) I found it quite surprising that this was how you should deal with the situation though as I thought it would be best to not bring it up as surely it's more painful? Anyway I guess that now basically the article has put doubt in my mind as to whether I'm doing the right thing regarding the grandparents. Should she be seeing them to be reminded of him? Or should I just keep them out of it as I never know what they're saying to her and I just don't trust them at all.

Just after opinions really, sorry to go on..and thank you :-)