Solzhenitsyn
Sir: Dr Bazarov's intemperate abuse of my person (Letters, September 9) can be safely left unanswered as long as it stays just this side of the libel laws. However, he also twists facts and this has to be replied to.
When the biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn written by George Feifer and myself states that in the autumn of 1970 the Nobel Prizewinner was first prepared to risk exile from his country to receive the prize in person and then changed his mind it relies on a public statement of the only Westerner known to have seen Solzhenitsyn repeatedly at the time, to have acted as a trusted intermediary between him and various Swedish authorities and to have maintained correspondence with him after he had made the statement we quote. The statement by such a person would be accepted as evidence of Solzhenitsyn's intentions in a British court. It is a far cry from "a statement from a Scandinavian newsman," as Dr Bazarov puts it.
David Bury 63 Drayton Gardens, London SW10
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