Angela Thirkell
Sir: I cannot agree with your reviewer of 26 November that my late mother, Angela Thirkell, had 'a stone of a heart'. This has become a smart and fashionable thing to say among reviewers, based largely on what Margot Strickland has written in her book, which is based in turn largely on what my two half-brothers wrote about her. My own experience of her is quite different, and I did know her a great deal better than your reviewer.
All right, she did have a smart tongue and could make the wounding remark, but she did give me great love and kindness as she did the many hundreds of people who wrote to me after her death. I just wish that such reviewers could do what their predecessors did, which was to present a balanced view, and not make good copy by character assassination, particularly of the dead who cannot hit back.
L. G. Thirkell 31 Lansdowne Road, London W11
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