Shame on you, Julie
Sir: Julie Burchill's incoherent account (Books, 8 April) of Angs Nin is an inade- quate substitute for a detached review of Deirdre Blair's biography of Nin. To sug- gest that the late Kathleen Tynan is the `sinister figure of the career widow', replete with 'the pose, the po-face and the pomp', is tendentious and illiterate.
The British Library considered Kenneth Tynan's archives worthy of acquisition. The Collected Letters, edited by his widow when she was dying, will complete the canon of his work when they are published. Her Life of Kenneth Tynan was a model of disciplined scholarship, informed by the `moral honesty' and 'constant creativity' Julie Burchill regards as provincial, and purports to have outgrown. More's the pity.
Margaret Elton
Clevedon Court, Somerset
Previous page
