IT HAS BEEN pointed out to me that when I
was discussing, last week, the ethics of anonymous reviewing, I did not mention one of the arguments put forward by the writer in the TLS that expert scholars see each other all the time, and 'a neces- sary rule of such a society is that its members should not honestly say in public what they think of one another's books. If we want honest review- ing, the only way out is anonymity.' I suppose the same could be said of anonymous letters, and it seems to me that the word 'honest' is being used in rather an odd sense. I do not think that that sort of 'honesty' is very common. I have yet to meet a reputable scholar who would say things under cover of anonymity which he would be afraid to say over his own name. And I don't believe that those who use this argument are real scholars : I think they are flyweights using anony- mity to pose as scholars. My own view is that reputable scholars prefer to write over their own names, that authors prefer signed reviews of their books, and that readers of reviews prefer signed reviews too.
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