Poetic licence
Sir: It apparently takes one 'poet' to spot another CA not very Franco account', 3 January.) In As I Walked Out One Midsum- mer Morning, Laurie Lee's charming evoca- tion of his year travelling in Spain just before the Civil War, he was taken under the wing of the South African poet, Roy Campbell, and his wife, while passing through Toledo. One bibulous evening, Campbell described to the impressionable 19-year-old Lee the circumstances of their romantic wedding in the Camargue. After trials of strength, mystical rites and so on, he and his wife had mounted white horses and galloped off into the midnight. 'A typi- cal Roy fantasy,' observed Lee tartly, years later. In fact, Campbell met his future wife in London, and wedding celebrations were held in a pub in Parkstone, in Dorset, admittedly dignified by the company of Augustus John.
Which all goes to show, as Philip Larkin once observed, that nothing, like some- thing, happens anywhere.
Robert Triggs
81 Gilling Court, Belsize Grove, London NW3
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