Sot.--Like Strix and Randolph Churchill I too Must admit to
having been blackballed from The Times birthday list this year.
Mind you, I can't guarantee that I have ever been whiteballed. I have never, before this year, looked in The Times to see (all right, don't believe it), but 1 do happen to know that I wasn't in in 1964, because several friends. of mine rang up to offer me their condolences, assuming that, like Strix, I must be on the skids or, like Randolph Churchill, dead. And just possibly both, a devastat- ing thought that prompts a poignant paraphrase of the last line of East Lynne: 'Dead, and not a word from Auntie!'
Well, sir, I don't intend, as Strix and Randolph Churchill seem prepared to do, merely to 'wait with idle curiosity' to see if my name appears next year.
intend action, I intend to see that it does.
On June 10, 1965, you will read in The Times agony column the following item:
'To a dramatist, on his birthday, "To me, dear friend, you never can be old."
Mr. (now Sir) W.H.'
Perhaps Strix and Churchill can think up similar conceits for their own birthdays. Or better ones. But I really don't see why we should take it lying down.
PS. Your readers may question the purpose of this letter. It should be obvious. To get the date of my birth in print, of course.
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