Not the same book
Sir: I do not seem to have read the same book as Philip Zeigler (Books, 15 November) although both title and author — My Three Fathers by Bill Patten — are identical. I read a moving, fascinating and brave account of how someone, in middle age, discovered and struggled to come to terms with the fact that his real father, Duff Cooper, and his putative father and stepfather, Joe Alsop, not to mention his own mother, had all, in their different ways, created a conspiracy of deception about both his identity and their true natures. Even his loving stepfather was a closet homosexual.
To be told suddenly and vindictively by your mother that your real father was one of her several lovers, and that she had betrayed the deceased father you loved, when you are over 40 is quite a blow, and a compelling tale by any standards. Your reviewer, however, seems to have taken from the book a litany of minor errors about aristocratic titles and a splenetic dislike of both the author and his style. This reader at least prefers to read Patten’s gripping, if subjective, memoir than the latest edition of Debrett’s.
John Ranelagh
Grantchester, Cambridge
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