The wrong Russell
Sir: Mr Auberon Waugh contributed an amusing review of his father's Diaries. I regret, however, that he weaves such a fantasy about the Sunday Times and its late Associate Editor, Mr Leonard Russell, who died in 1974. Mr Waugh suggests that Mr Russell recommended against Sunday Times serialisation because he was mentioned in the Waugh Mss as a pansy.
He says, first, that Mr Russell advised against the Sunday Times buying the Diary for serialisation. This is not true. He advised in favour of purchase. He suggested an offer of £5000. Mr Waugh says 'The Sunday Times later made a small offer'. We offered £8500. Mr Waugh then proceeds to discuss the omission of various names from the published diaries and, quoting from the edited original he theatrically supplies the name 'Russell' for the following passage about a visit to a Victorian picture exhibition in Peckham: 'Two pansies were going round. One proved to be [Russell] the critic, so I took him back to St James's for a drink.'
Mr Waugh goes on: 'The only other mention of Leonard Russell, the man who, later, as Associate Editor and Chief Literary Editor of the Sunday Times was to discourage that newspaper from serialising the diaries, comes on page 692 . .
He has the wrong Russell. The Russell who is an art crftic, as everyone knows, is John Russell. He was art critic of the Sunday Times from 1950-1974 and is now art critic of the New York Times. He has been kind enough to confirm to me that it was he, and not Leonard Russell, who met Waugh at the Peckham picture exhibition.
Mr John Russell, one might add, is no more a pansy than Mr Leonard Russell was a suppressor. Or Mr Auberon Waugh very reliable about anything to do with the Sunday Times.
Harold Evans Sunday Times 200 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1
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