ARISING FROM A complaint by Professor Trevor- Roper of a
rather snooty review of his book of historical essays, a debate has been taking place in the leader and correspondence columns of The Times Literary Supplement about the merits of anonymous reviewing. While I admire and enjoy the TLS, I should have thought it owed its excel- lence to its editor and its tradition rather than to the intrinsic virtues of anonymous reviewing. But in a letter in a recent issue, signed appropriately enough `One of your Reviewers,' it was claimed that `the anonymity rule is the only reason why more and better scholars review for you than for the Sunday newspapers or the weeklies publishing signed reviews.' In fact, of course, a great many of the scholars (though evidently not 'One of your Reviewers') who review in the TLS also review in the Sundays and weeklies. And the reviewer's explanation of why he and his colleagues are really 'better scholars' thin the scholars who write over their own names and take public responsi- bility for what they say would have been rather more convincing if it had not been for one of the letters on the same page, showing what kind of scholarship is really possessed by some of these complacent anon ymi.
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