21 MARCH 1987, Page 24

Third-class minds

Sir: A tiny correction, to keep the Specta- tor record spotless. Connolly . ('Waugh drops the pilot', 7 March) did not get a third in Greats, but in the Modern History School. So did Waugh. (We were all in the same class list, along with Graham Greene, who got a second.) Cyril was not only reading French, by the way: he was reading widely in his favourite classics, Latin and Greek.

No doubt it will be thought donnish of me to say that they merited their thirds. For, though both were exceptionally talented with words, Mr Bell's extracts show that neither of them could think, strictly speaking, at all well.

A. L. Rowse

Trenarran House, St Austell, Cornwall