18 DECEMBER 1993, Page 58

Sir: My second edition of The Oxford Dic- tionary of

Quotations, the 1970 reprint, gives me 'early instance' of the use of the phrase 'Iron Curtain as being in 1920. It apparently occurs in Ethel Snowden's Through Bolshevik Russia. Writing of her arrival with a Labour Party delegation, she says, 'We were behind the iron curtain at last!'

Does all this matter? Surely what matters is Churchill's use of the phrase first of all in a letter to Truman dated 4 June 1945, and then in his Fuller' speech of March 1946. Alastair Jones Langdale House 49 Mearse Laze, Barnt Green, Birmingham.