Wide of the mark
Sir: Mark Archer tells us in his review of Xanthippic Dialogues in The Spectator (13 March):
Roger Scruton, conservative polemicist turned philosophical prankster, makes a duti- ful attempt to resurrect the tradition in these four spoof dialogues by famous philosophers' women. But if the cap and bells sits some- what woodenly upon the distintruished pro- fessor's head, it is because his sallies against the philosophical shibboleths of our age are let down by the importance he attaches to himself and his own ideas.
As Roger Scruton was one of a small number of Western academics who kept coming to our part of the Evil Empire to help persecuted people here, we had an ample opportunity to become acquainted with his personality. The description of Roger Scruton given above is, in our opin- ion, utterly remote from the truth.
It only remains for us to hope that these sallies against Roger Scruton's personality were presented by an expert who did not attach too much importance to himself and his own ideas.
Pavel Bratinka
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cerinsky Paldc, Prague, Czech Republic
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