11 NOVEMBER 1955, Page 16

THE NAME'S THE SAME

SIR,—Reviewing my novel, The Primrose Patti Isabel Quigly refers to my 'respectable literar antecedents.' Lest this be misunderstood, may I make it clear, out of fairness to Mr. E. M.

Forster and the shade of Dickens's biographer, that I am neither relative nor descendant of these distinguished men?

I venture also to add that I am more pleased by Miss Quigly's allowance of a remote coin-. parison with Balzac, than worried by her' remark that I write 'thunderingly badly' for Balzac's style has always been faulted thus by some of the more academic critics. I can only say that I would be delighted to think I could ever write half as badly as he did!—Yours