16 JULY 1942, Page 14

A SCHOLAR'S CLIMB SIR, —In a review of Mr. A. L.

Rowse's A Cornish Childhood, which appeared in last week's Spectator over my initials, I used in a purely literary sense a phrase which, it occurs to me on seeing the review in print, might conceivably be misinterpreted as implying that this was one of those autobiographies whose writers seem to delight in dwelling on the physical and mental vagaries of their sexual development. Nothing in fact could be further from the truth. From anything of the kind Mr. Rowse's book is conspicuously free ; that is one of its merits. I should like (though neither Mr. Rowse nor anyone else has raised the

matter) to make that completely clear.—! am, Sir, &c., H. W. H.