Lady Astor
Sir: As a leading authority, Mr Maurice Collis (November 18) has reviewed my biography of Lady Astor in generous terms. I feel nevertheless that "for the record " I should adjust a few questions of fact.
(1) 1 devoted my first sixty pages to Lady Astor's childhoN. youth and early womanhood in Virginia, not through the pressure of her nieces (though I relied m.ich on their help) but because I thought the subject important to an understanding of the life of this Virginian.
(2) Mr Collis refers to her father's estate " where the labour was slave." When Mr -Langhorne bought the estate in 1892 slavery had been abolished throughout the United States for many years.
(3) Lord Astor was not " obliged " in 1919 "to give up his [Parliamentary] seat in Plymouth to his wife Nancy." The decision that she should stand was reached after long discussion, and the decision seems to have been doubtful till the last moment. He was, of course, obliged to surrender the seat.
(4) Lady Astor represented the Sutton division of Plymouth from December 1919 till July 1945, not 1944.
(5) Mr Collis compliments me on my account of Lady Astor's life after 1945, especially on my " description of her "three closest friends, Lord Lothian, George Bernard Shaw . . . , and T. E. Lawrence." Lord Lothian had died in 1940, and Lawrence in 1935. Shaw remained her friend till his death in 1950. In fact her closest friends in her last years were Shaw's cousin Mrs Musters, and Lady Astor's brother-in-law Lord Brand who died a year before her in 1963.
Christopher Sykes
Swyre House, Swyre, near Dorchester. Dorset
Previous page
