"INDIA MARCHES PAST"
. [To the Editor of THE. SPECTATOR.], Sin,—If books. on India were written with the intention of satisfying Mr. Edward Thompson (difficult though that may seem) they would obviously have to include such elaborations and annotations as he himself supplies in his review of my India Marches Past. They would thereupon cease to be what the authors and publishers conceived, but be something quite different.
Here are the tragic alternatives of writing : one must either produce massive, laboured tomes, crammed to their gummed backs with details—tomes that all save the scholar will ignore ; or present an interesting " outline " at_ the risk of irritating your reviewer. - It is bad reviewing to be concerned solely with fault finding, to detect not one shred of merit in a work that has involved more than a year of research with the ambition of conveying something of the glamour of India to the .people of this country.
It may be that the support only of the =discerning has borne the book into its third • impression within two weeks ; but surely Mr. Thompson would not place in the same category the critics of the Daily Telegraph and The Taller, who, happily among countless others, have had nothing but praise for this
volume.—I am, Sir, &c., -
" Little Walcott," It. J. MINNEY, The Bishop's Avenue, N. 2- .
[Dr. Thompson writes : " Books conveying the glamour.' of India are as alike as two peas ; Mr. Minney'a does ,poorly what Mrs. Steele did as well in India _Through the Ages, and Mr. Waley better in A Pageant of India. That his book should be acclaimed will . surprise no one who knows how reviewing has deteriorated, and how unwilling any reviewer who is also an author is to say that he thinks a book downright bad. Mr. Minney's publishers asserted that he was a his- torian, which misled me into supposing that his book was meant for an adult public."]
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