Sassoon remembered
Sir: I was delighted to read Rupert HartDavis's retort (24 January) to Simon Raven's criticism of Siegfried Sassoon's post-war character. I agree wholeheartedly with Hart-Davis. Raven is indeed grotesquely, if not viciously, wide of the mark.
This surprises me, as I know that Simon Raven is one of the few people to have had access to Sassoon's original war diaries on which a large part of The Complete Memoirs of George She rston is based. It is clear from these journals that Sassoon was far from being 'a man, of limited intellect and of limited interest', as Simon Raven so offhandedly suggests. What concerns me more is what Simon Raven has failed to say. In The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer Sassoon polarises, the man who had really endured the war at its worst was everlastingly differentiated from everyone except his fellow soldiers'. This is amplified by Paul Fussell, who in his acclaimed book The Great War and Modern Memory, calls it 'the binary vision of Siegfried Sassoon'. Fussell writes: 'what is unique in Sassoon is the brilliance with which he exploits the dichotomies forced to his attention by his wartime experience and refines them until they become the very fibre of his superb memoir of the war.'
This 'binary vision' is clearly a disease from which Simon Raven does not suffer. Stuart Cooper 28 Dawson Place, London W2
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