Sir: The continuing correspondence in your columns about 'what Harold
Nicolson was like' seems to me of minor importance compared with what he wrote—and I do not mean what he Avrote in his Diaries.
There is a tendency nowadays to cash in on
pseudo-psychiatric analyses of writers' private lives, such as the letter by Lilian von Versen (4 October).
Thousands of words have been written about the idiosyncrasies of (say) Oscar Wilde and Somerset Maugham, while the point surely is that works like The Importance of Being Earnest and most of Maugham's short stories have given, and still give, a great deal of pleasure to a large number of people.
Harold Nicolson was always readable, humorous and to the point. His Some People, for instance, is a work of art, worth twice the content of his Diaries and many times the rather dull controversy about his character.
Robin Bousfield Hazel House, Goose Green, Hadlow, Kent
Previous page
