Gwen John
Sir: The Spectator of 24 October took long to arrive on this sub-tropical isle and I aM still waiting for a copy of Susan Chitty's life of Gwen John. It delighted me therefore to find a review of it in your issue. However, your reviewer John Jolliffe is surelY mistaken in saying that 'Susan Chitty has few insights into . . . the Catholic faith', Her mother Antonia White, who died only last year, is the author of that minor masterpiece Frost in May which is redolent of Catholicism, as was the author's life. My faith in Mr Jolliffe's critical powers is further shaken by his inability to see how ex quisitely apt it is to describe the Brompton Oratory as 'the famous basilica in the Italian style opposite Harrods'. In manY ways the two are inseparable.
B. C. Villers Apartado 128, Arrecife de Lanzarote,
Canary Islands
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