19 MARCH 1965, Page 15

Not Guilty

SIR,—Few enough papers or magazines review volumes of poetry at the present time. I was there- fore very surprised to sec Mr. lan Hamilton in last week's issue of the Spectator again reviewing Mr.

Alan Ross's North from Sicily, having already done exactly the same thing in a recent issue of The London Magazine. This sort of literary sharp prac- tice seems hard to justify.

10 Provost Road, NW3

JOHN HORDER

[Mr. Hamilton writes: 'Mr. Horder's statement is untrue. It is just possible, I suppose, that he is thinking of an article on the 1940s which I con- tributed to The London Magazine in January 1965; in this I mentioned Mr. Ross's Derelict Days (1947). But who knows? Surely he ought to have checked his facts before making such a charge?'—Editor, Spectator.]