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In brief
SIR: Oliver Pritchett’s article, mourning the death of British understatement (August issue). Top-hole.
Roger Bickerstaffe, Bexleyheath, Kent
Larkin, warts and all
SIR: I’m surprised that the wise old bird A N Wilson (August issue) thinks that Anthony Thwaite should have ‘binned’ the less appetising of Larkin’s letters when he edited them. How safely to distinguish the acceptable from the unacceptable ones? And why deny a fascinating man, Larkin, his contradictions, complexity and even ugliness? Isn’t that what makes him one of us?
A N surely wouldn’t want to promote the kind of thinking that led Isabel Burton to burn her husband’s racier translations and – though who knows for sure – Fanny Stevenson to provoke Robert Louis to destroy the first and maybe tougher version of . Maybe there was a bit of Hyde in the Jekyll A N postulates
