18 JANUARY 1992, Page 24

Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft is entitled to ped- dle his familiar

line of being nasty to Richard Strauss, but he really shouldn't trot out the old chestnut of Toscanini's remark: `To Strauss the composer I take off my hat: to Strauss the man I put it on again.' His biographer has convincingly shown that Toscanini never made that remark, or any- thing like it.

Michael Kennedy

3 Moorwood Drive, Sale, Cheshire.