In Bron's defence
From Mrs Teresa Waugh Sir: No doubt some of your readers will have been a little perplexed by Geoffrey Wheatcroft's unattributed quotation in his review for your Christmas issue of Auberon Waugh's Closing the Circle (Books, 15/22 December). When he writes that 'he [Bron] would have thought it quite absurd if anyone had said of him that "his work was its own monument" ' Wheatcroft is quoting from a private letter which I, Bron's widow, sent him in reply to his own request to write a biography. In his opinion, Bron was someone whose 'life and work and personality and performance' needed to be `taken together'. I was not willing to offer him my co-operation.
What, one may wonder, leads Wheatcroft to suppose that his biography would have survived as a finer monument to Bron than would Bron's own unique wit?
In view of his ham-fisted analysis of humour, and the mean-spirited, didactic nature of Wheatcroft's article — for it is hardly a review — I can only feel that in Bron's best interests I made the right decision.
Teresa Waugh
Taunton, Somerset
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