Letters to the Editor
The HO and `Lolita' Graham Greene Alanbrooke and Churchill Maj.-Gen. J. A. SI. Bond Cyprus L. E. S. Leese, Michael Stewart-Smith Small-Farm Efficiency Geoffrey Eley Cri de Coeur Greta Lamb Mental Healthmanship Mr. 'S.'
Leslie Stephen's Essays S. 0. A. Ullman Christianity and Race Rev. C. Raymond Scott Taper and the Welsh Cledwyn Hughes, MP Swindon and Boccaccio Coln Brogan lien and PEN Daniel George Government by Old Etonians R. W. Wood Hold Tightly Joy Willcox
THE HO AND `LOLITA'
SIR,—In spite of Mr. John Gordon's public confes- sion to having smuggled pornographic books on occa- sion into this country, the John Gordon Society at its first meeting decided that it could still bear the name of its hero. We must be prepaied for the vagaries of genius..Now Mr. Butler—the best Home Secretary We have got—has come to the support of Mr. Gordon in his condemnation of Lolita, the distinguished novel by Professor Vladimir Nabokov of Cornell Univer- sity. The Home Office seem to have brought pressure to bear on the French authorities and induced them to suppress the series in which Lolita happens to ap- Peas from publication in English in France. Perhaps this was part of the price exacted for our support over Sue,? As President of the John Gordon Society I feel the Society should folldw loyally in Mr. Gordon's footsteps, and at the next meeting of the Society I shall have pleasure in proposing that Mr. Butler be elected an Honorary. Vice-President. Whatever differ- ences of opinion we may have about his action, we cannot but admire his temerity in extending the con- trol exercised by his Ministry across the Channel. In the days when Baudelaire's poems were condemned by a French court there was no British Home Secre- . Lary with the courage to work behind the, scenes in defence of, our tourists' morality. The Society looks forward to the day When the Minister of the Interior in Paris will reciprocate 'Mr: Butler's activities and arrange the suppression in London of any French books liable to excite the passions of Monsieur Dupont or Monsieur Jean Gordon on holiday. The Society might' do a very useful work in compiling such 'a list and keeping 'an eye on that danger spot for Parisians, Messrs. • Hachette's bookshop in
Regent Street.—Yours faithfully, . GRAHAM GREENE President,' The John Gordon Society
G.6 Albany, WI
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