Gaslight gaffe
Sir: Robert Gore-Langton's piece 'Thrilling Stuff' (Arts, 7 June) on the revival of Patrick Hamilton's Gaslight at the Old Vic stated: 'Hamilton's biographer, Nigel Jones, has a low regard for Gaslight and doesn't even mention in his book that it was a triumph on Broadway where it ran under the feeble title Angel Street.'
This is completely incorrect. Here is what I wrote in my biography Through a Glass Darkly: 'Under the title Angel Street, it [Gaslight] transferred to Broadway, where it enjoyed a huge money-making success, running for four years and making Patrick a very wealthy man.' As for my not having a high regard for Gaslight — on the contrary, I wrote of it having 'a touch of genius . . . with qualities that lift Gaslight out of the run-of-the-mill pastiche Victorian melodrama and explain its enduring success'.
Did Mr Gore-Langton read the same book? Nigel Tones Lewes, East Sussex
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