literary style
Sir: As a literary critic for over thirty years, writing most regularly for such papers as the Times and the Guardian and under editors such as Ivor Brown (who in a review of one of my books referred to my "excellent prose"), I question with some amusement Leo Abse's own qualifications to judge literary style (October 5). As I have also been paid to write and lecture on historical subjects for a number of
years, 1 am curious, too, as to what he means by "professional historian."
However, in the circumstances I feel I must take the blame for the major part of at least one of Mr Abse's sentences. The opening of the first chapter of my book on Wilkes reads: "He was born with a squint and an ugliness which, if it did not merit the satanic cartoon drawn by his enemy William Hogarth, was remarkable enough to have impressed itself on everyone who met him." Perhaps literary readers might like to compare the style and "excruciating" punctuation of my sentence above, with that of Mr Abse in his not-quite-exact and unacknowledged reproduction of it.
Audrey Williamson 29 Turner House, Erasmus Street, London SW I.
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