21 MARCH 1992, Page 30

Orson's cuckoo

Sir: Auberon Waugh may have succumbed to the solicitations of a Swiss paradiso ter- restre (Another voice, 11 January), but he ought to realise, for the sake of literary accuracy at least, that Graham Greene did not make the 'famous joke about cuckoo- clocks in The Third Man'. It belongs rather to Orson Welles. That line of dialogue occurs only in the film version of The Third Man, and Greene states in the preface to the novel that it was 'written into the script by Mr Welles himself. (Penguin edition, 1990, p.10).

Anthony Ozturk

Stowe School, Buckingham