Turkish delight
Sir: The learned Norman Stone's put-down of James Pettifer's ignorant book (Books, 16 August), starting with its borrowed title, The Turkish Labyrinth, was wonderful to read after the viscerally Turk-hating stuff which has passed for reviews of books about Turkey in some other publications.
I am still waiting, not with any great expectation, to hear from the Sunday Times of an authenticated source for the claim by a recent reviewer that 'of the world's great cities, Istanbul is the one to which most first-time visitors never return'. The same reviewer had earlier claimed that 'any book which obliges the reader to consider Turk- ish history is bound to provoke disgust and despair at so monotonous a chronicle of depravity'. Such a remark about black, brown or yellow history would have been struck out as racist, but anything goes about us Turks.
All the more credit to The Spectator and all this in the same issue as my Mag- dalen contemporary Bevis Hillier's review of the letters of our former tutor K.B. McFarlane, whose salt we have both eaten and champagne both drunk.
Osman Streater
69 Brook Street, London W1
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