SIR,—Was I the exception to the rule, or was Mal-
colm Rutherford? My experience was the opposite to his.
was 'farmed out' to a young Don, a Fellow of All Souls, for my tutorials. He made me write simple English and use short sentences. He forced me to Put down on one page what I had put down on four. He revealed to me that there arc always two sides to every question, and that partisanship, bigotry, and Prejudice were the hall-marks of the inept historian, and not only of the historian. He stopped me short When I quoted the opinions of living historians, and suggested it would be better if I were to find out what Aristotle, Hobbes, or John Stuart Mill had to say on the same subject. So much so did this advice become part of my thinking that to this day, as a eislergYman, I pass over briefly what the South Bank has to say and turn instead to Augustine, Aquinas, or William Law, preferring their opinions to the latest fashions. And once, if once only, he asked me where I had found a certain passage, shyly requesting that he might be allowed to use it in one of his forthcoming books. True, I did not realise all of what he was doing for me at the time. I do now. I was no scholar, only one of the also rans, over whom he might not have taken so much trouble. But he did. He was that kind iiitntingham Parish Church,
St, Marlin's-in-the-Bull Ring G. C. POTTS
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