ORDE WINGATE
SIR,—In his attack upon my forthcoming book, Gideon Goes to War, your contributor, Strix, makes several mis-statements. The most serious of them is his charge that my bio- graphy of General Wingate was written with- out consulting his widow or his family.
This, of course, is not true. They were consulted. It did, however, become clear, after a conversation with a spokesman of the family, that the Wingates had firip views—as was their right—as to the line that should be taken in a biography of Wingate and what weight of emphasis should be put upon certain phases of his career. It was on the advice and urging, and with the fullest help, of some of General Wingate's most distinguished admirers and former com- rades that I decided to carry on without the guiding hand of the Wingate family. But the reasons for this decision have nothing to do, as Strix suggests, with stunting Wingate's life: and I am sure that those who have, so far, only read the condensed version of the book in the Sunday Express cannot have received such an impression.
The 'stunt' would, in fact, appear to have been performed by Strix in making the serialisation of my book the excuse to enumerate all the failings of Wingate he can remember.
Whatever I have written about Ordc Wingate in Gideon Goes to War is in a context explaining the background and circumstance. There is no intention of denigrating him. On the contrary, I think readers of my book will find that Wingate emerges from it as something much more important than the eccentric soldier he has appeared to the world until now. —Yours faithfully,
LEONARD MOSLEY Slough Cottage, Buck land, Botch worth, Surrey
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