26 MAY 1984, Page 19

Younger Fogey

Sir: Alan Watkins (Diary, 19 May) may owe the term 'Young Fogey' to Mr Terence Kilmartin, but it has quite a long history. So far as one can make out it was coined by John Wain in his autobiography Sprightly Running (1958) as a means of describing the new generation of prematurely aged Oxford dons. The first fictional example of the type appears in Mr Wain's earlier novel Hurry On Down in the form of the character George Hutchins.

David Taylor

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