Forbes corner
Sir: Pace Mr James Hogg (Letters, 22 February), 1 am a long-standing admirer of Kenneth Rose's historical and biographical work and rejoiced in his Wolfson Prize. But nevertheless (and I hope in the current mood of British sensitivity about German anti-Semitism, alas much more than half a century too late, I shall not be deliberately misunderstood). I must protest. Mr Rose has been wearing two hats, one until barely a fortnight ago that of a gossip columnist, and it was beneath the latter that I was commenting on the egg left on his face by his remark about Randolph Churchill and his lately lamented first wife, who nevertheless, literally in the last month of her life, showed noteworthy fairness in splitting her £6 million bequest to her silly son between him and his admirable and long-suffering ditched wife.
As I say, 1 have been and remain an admirer of Mr Rose's historical works. Though his Curzon may have been super- seded by David Gilmour's recent chef d'oeuvre, his revelation of King George V's despicable cowardice in refusing asylum anywhere in his then vast empire to his first cousin and physical double Tsar Nicholas and the latter's family ranks him high in the history he serves with his pen.
Of Mr Michael Ware's silly speculations I will say only that while certainly Franco- phone, I am neither Scottish nor Anglophile nor Swiss.
Alastair Forbes Château d'Oex, Vaud,
Switzerland
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