SIR,—Mr E. D. O'Brien is ignobly embarrassed to find himself
mixed up with a press which, when they were not commercially rewarding, published' works by some important writers (as well as some porno- graphic rubbish).
I must embarrass him further. In his long, uneasy letter of dissociation from M Girodias, he writes: 'It may amuse you to know, sir, that a certain left- wing Socialist MP—who shall be nameless—who, like myself, was a classical scholar when young, swallowed M Girodias's book hook, line and sinker, and wrote, I see, praising the scholarship of the translation with, as he said, the exception of "the obvious misprint on page 63"!' (Mr O'Brien's exclamation mark.)
This is curious. I am the MP referred to. But 'I see' must mean that Mr O'Brien, when he wrote to you, had in front of him, or had lately seen, the letter that I wrote, on February 22, to his Mr Jack Smeaton, who had written to me, enclosing an advance copy of the Bedside Odyssey and soliciting
a comment on it. -
Having had some experience of the 'promotion' methods employed by such PR firms as Mr O'Brien's, I replied at once (before I could be expected to have read the book) and cautiously. I have a duplicate of my reply. In the course of it I paid tribute to M Girodias's work in publishing books of serious literary interest. Of the Bedside Odyssey I wrote only this: 'I feel sure that I shall read it with pleasure. I hope that there is still time to correct the more obvious misprints, as in the heading on page 63.'
(This misprint had sprung to my eye in the course of a few minutes' glance through the book.) To twist this conventional acknowledgement into 'praising the scholarship of the translation' and, in doing so, to inject a sly dose of political partisanship, is a distortion not excused by Mr O'Brien's roguish 'who shall be nameless.' TOM DRIBERG House of Commons, London, SW I
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