Wandering voice
Sir: Whether it is due to the onset of Alzheimer's Disease or just his customary bilious fog, I am afraid that Auberon Waugh's memory is beginning to play tricks on him. Some years ago I wrote a book on the way the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980 were used by the Soviet regime as a gigantic `Potemkin Village' to delude the world about the grim realities of life in the USSR. No one could possibly have interpreted this as an apology for the Soviet system, except it now seems your 'wandering voice' Mr Waugh (Another voice, 28 March).
I can only suppose that somewhere along the line he heard mention of my book, got it all completely upside down in his poor confused old brain and now imagines that I am part of the international Kremlin con- spiracy which is trying to deprive him of his wine cellar. It has long been evident that there are few subjects on which Mr Waugh writes with less knowledge or authority than the Soviet Union, largely because of his obscure psychic need to see all Russians as subhuman monsters. But if he wants evidence to support his quaint illusions, he will have to do better than this.
Christopher Booker
The Old Rectory, Litton, Bath
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