Accounting for Powell
Sir: Your contributor, Mr J. Enoch Powell (`The trick of that voice', 30 October), finds that only a group of writers could account for the 'notorious and phenomenal polY- mathy' of Shakespeare's' works.
But what could account for a man from an obscure provincial background who becomes a university professor of ancient Greek at the age of 25; who compiles a lexi- con to Herodotus and edits the text of Thucydides; who then joins the army as a private soldier and is promoted to brigadier within five years; who wins a diploma in ori- ental and African studies; who enters Par- liament and becomes a minister of the Crown; who masters enough economics to make the best speech in the House in the historical debate on sterling in June 1972; who writes an authoritative work on the House of Lords in the Middle Ages; who published several volumes of poetry; who can spout Dante by the yard and is widely read in French, German, Portuguese and Urdu; who in his early 50s learnt enough modern Greek in two 45-minute lessons to broadcast—no, sir, you would indeed have to be 'abnormally credulous' (to lift one of Mr Powell's phrases) to believe all this, and I myself would certainly not believe the last item in the list had I not been Mr Powell's teacher on that occasion, and if I did not still have in my possession a 'script as broadcast' of his obituary notice in Greek of the late Winston Churchill, with Mr Powell's manuscript corrections on it.
David Phillips 1 Post Office Cottages,
Shottenden, Canterbury
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