LETTERS Oeuvre done
Sir: A. N. Wilson is either naive or hypocritical; perhaps he is both. He says (8 June) that he felt 'sick and winded' when compared in print with Kitty Kelley. He goes on: 'I do not regard myself as a public figure. . . if the public want to know about me they will find all that I am prepared to reveal in my printed oeuvre'. Apart from being absurdly pompous, this is the remark of a man who wants things all his own way.
A week before he whined to us about the victimisation he had suffered, Mr Wilson, writing about a programme of mine in the Sunday Telegraph, made a series of dis- agreeable criticisms which, though wrong in my view, I have no alternative but to grin and bear. However, he went on to describe me as 'an over-made-up, over- paid television apparatchik'. No doubt he enjoyed dashing off this gratuitous swipe; no doubt he gave little thought to the hurtful effect it would have; and no doubt he comforted himself as he wrote this particular contribution to his 'oeuvre' that nobody could attack him in a personal way because he is an author, and authors are beyond that sort of thing.
They are not, nor should they be. Mr Wilson cannot himself decide whether or not he wishes to become a personality (although if he prefers a lower profile he should stop telling stories about the Queen Mother, getting Lord Denning into trouble and making controversial remarks about Jesus Christ). Like Mr Wilson, I would like to retain my privacy and be judged on my work alone. But that's impossible, because people such as him enjoy making snappy, sexist judgments about me based, in the main, on entirely fictional estimates of what I earn and superficial assessments of my character.
I hope he learns from his recent painful experience. As far as I am concerned, he is a man just as guilty as those he seeks to accuse of 'rehashing the same handful of half truths'.
Sue Lawley
Briarcroft, 4 Briar Walk, London SW15
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