22 FEBRUARY 1957, Page 27

HEN AND PEN

SIR,-1 am just as bewildered by Mr. Daniel George's letter as he claims to have been by that bit in my review. What does he really want to know? Or is he lust asking an unanswerable, what-do-you-mean-by- it, who-do-you-think-you-are kind of question? All right : if what 'puzzles' him is how I can have had the effrontery to couple the poultry-run with the PEN Club—he hives to impress or terrify me, perhaps, by blowing up the latter into 'the International Associa- tion of writers known as the PEN'—then I must disappoint him : I just can't think how I came to do it. If he simply can't see how anybody can call an association of writers 'restricting,' then I must answer that when all the editors, journalists, publishers, dons and broadcasters have been allowed for, there remains a hard core of writers somewhere about, and that too Much time- spent with other writers restricts a writer equally with too much time spent with chickens. I agree that many individual writers are better value than individual chickens.—Yours faithfully,