16 AUGUST 1957, Page 16

DAME EDITH'S BAN

SIR,—Your two brilliant correspondents have col- lided on a precedent for Dame Edith Sitwell's limitation of review copies. Now, please, will some- one disclose what critical example misled Pharos into citing the Daily Telegraph's review of Dame Edith's poems as a 'devastating analysis of her talents"? The attempted 'analysis' therein, of robes and ornaments, would have been done more skilfully on the Women's Page; and it is 'devastating' to see your nimble-minded commentator hoodwinked by a few cheap and vulgar personal gibes from a re- viewer who (to borrow his own sentence, with due acknowledgment) 'shows an appalling insensitivity both to the sound and the meaning of words.' Really, Pharos should keep better company, if we are all to go on reading and digesting him l —Yours faithfully,