30 DECEMBER 1978, Page 27

Flemish Hamilton

Sir: Mr Alastair Forbes, in your issue of 9 December writes, 'How shameful that the estimable Founder and Chairman of Hamish Hamilton Ltd was not offered a knighthood long ago' and I most emphatically endorse these sentiments.

Mr Forbes is mistaken in his impression that this firm is now 'swallowed by the Thomson Organisation'. As an author under the banner of Hamish Hamilton Ltd, I can assert from my own experience that Mr Hamilton, the least pushful of men, has always been captain of his ship even from the days when he Stroked an English eight which won a silver medal in the Amsterdam Olympic Games in 1928.

Surely a man of Mr Hamilton's prestige (Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, Grand Officiale of the Order of Merit, Italy; Founder and Chairman of the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship since 1954) deserves some recognition from his own country.

Gerald Moore Beeckwood Cottage, Penn Bottom, Penn, Bucks.