Pure Germaine
Sir: I note that senior feminist, Germaine Greer, complains of an attack by a junior member of the sisterhood, Suzanne Moore, and deplores all such attacks of women upon women (Arts, 20 May).
Yet Dr Greer has been constantly guilty of just such attacks, which may be why her life has been 'made a misery by the law of libel'. I was one of her victims. In the Liter- ary Review, just before Auberon Waugh became editor, she accused me of trailing my half-starved, pasty-faced children across Europe on donkeys and of consuming her entire Tuscan wine production in the course of an Easter Sunday morning, adding a number of vicious remarks about my character and personality. As I could not afford a libel action I settled for an apology and costs from the magazine.
Is it only a coincidence that a mention of Germaine's private parts has again aroused her fury? This time it was Richard Neville's reference to her womb (or lack of it). In my case it was my observation in my book The Great Donkey Walk, that on our Tuscan visit, in deference to our small children 'her conversation was remarkably pure and she only mentioned her vagina once'.
Susan Chitty
Bow Cottage, West Hoathly, West Sussex
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