Sir: Such is the power of Auberon Waugh's pen (November
6), that he cannot even make a decent job of being bitchy. His review of My novel Onward Virgin Soldiers was like something from a
fifth form buffoon. How can a criaic expect to be taken seriously when he squanders his space on fatuous, adolescent jibes about an author's photograph and (for God's sake!) the fact that the author's parents are dead?
Mr Waugh's own unappetising appearance has been the subject of previous correspondence in your journal; patently it is his recently strangled chicken look which gives root to his hang-up about the faces of others. As for my parents — their deaths, when I was twelve, were not engineered by me as some sort of publicity stunt. (My old man, in fact, was drowned while bringing little Aub his wartime orange juice.) It might be said that had Mr Waugh been bereft of .his father it might have been to his advantage.
Your critic admits he only read fifty pages of my novel. This being so I can only suppose that the qualities which others have found, and which moved an unsentimental paperback company to pay £50,000 for the rights, must have corn
menced on page fifty-one. Iwoltirl prefer to write for two million readers (which I have) than for one wet critic who complains that be fails to get sexual anticipatkal, from my work. In this matter ! would point out ahat I am author and not a miracle healer. Since he had recently derided J. B. Priestley and the highly success,' ful Doris Lessing, I am in goo", company. At least I am reduced to writing hack pieces called 'Five Easy Ways Into Society' for weekly magazinef, which is Mr Waugh's lot. If this what he means by origintn
writing ' and ' sophistication then I'm glad I write dirty books. Leslie Thorno,s Old Manor Cottage, Butchett s Green, Nr Maidenhead, Berks
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