20 SEPTEMBER 1963, Page 13

THE TOTAL PASSION SIR,—Isn't Colin Maclnnes making exactly the same

mistake as Evelyn Home, Mary Grant and other advisers of the lovelorn? They exasperate by assuming that only their sort of love—married, legal, long-term—is 'the real thing'; he insists that only his sort—ephemeral, threatened, short-term—is 'the real thing.' To assume that the only real thing is the one you happen to know about yourself strikes me as equally narrow-minded, whether you own par- ticular brand happens to be far out or deeply con- ventional.

KATHARINE WHITEHORN