15 NOVEMBER 1963, Page 15

AFTERTHOUGHT ON HOMOSEXUALS SIR,—I suppose it is no good expecting

a protest against your contributor Alan Brien's article in your issue of October 25 to have much effect upon Spectator policy in excusing, or dealing sympathe- tically with, the practice of homosexuality, and can- not now relieve the pompous tone of his article or his cowardly introduction of such names as those of Lord Kitchener and others.

But as a reader of some length of time, after my family before me, 1 do make the protest. Would the Spectator ask Mr. Brien what evidence he has for introducing the names of dead people as though they had been sufferers from this dreadful weakness?

Don't you think, if you sympathise with those suffering from it, that they should be helped to overcome it, not by excusing it or publishing articles such as the one in question but by putting forward remedies, which I am sure your paper with the resources at its disposal is quite capable of suggest-