10 APRIL 1976, Page 17

Gore Vidal

Sir: I must correct what may have been a misleading impression given by your reviewer, Peter Ackroyd, in 'Blood, thunder and Gore' (Spectator, 27 March, p. 20).

Washington, D.C. was not, as Mr Ackroyd states, Gore Vidal's first historical novel. First published in 1967, Washington, D.C. comes after Mr. Vidal's brilliant novel, Julian (1964), which was of course based on the life of the Apostate.

Mr Vidal's early novel, A Search for the King: A Twelfth Century Legend (1950), which has since been repudiated, is also historical, telling of the quest for Richard I by Blondel de Neel, his troubadour.

Leonard Edwin Webster

48 Marshall Road, Oldbury, Warley, West Midlands