7 MAY 1983, Page 20

Cafe life

Sir: In his fascinating article (16 April) Walter Kendall describes how Leon Trot- sky, as a Balkans war correspondent, stayed at the Moskva Hotel in Belgrade. This is still the best hotel in the city, and it is still patronised by foreign correspondents when the need arises. A regular customer in the Moskva's café is Milovan Djilas, a better writer and a better man than Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and the rest of that tribe. Djilas had the courage to apostasise from Marxism. Would Trotsky, as Mr Kendall suggests he was on the fringe of doing at the end of his life, really have done so?

Richard West

Holland Park Avenue, London W11