11 OCTOBER 1969, Page 33

Dream queen

Sir: Christopher Booker mentioned (20 September) that the last sentence in Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria with its 168 words Possibly constituted the longest sentence in English literature. But is it really so? I once tried, with small success, to translate an unusually long sentence in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, in the thirty-ninth chapter : it describes Miss Squeers taking breakfast in the inn called Saracen's Head. Checking that sentence now, you find 219 words.