Who's who?
Sir: Although I have read The Spectator weekly for something like sixty years, I am still puzzled by your use of owns de plume. Who are Tom Puzzle, Book-. buyer, Waspe, Skinflint, Gulliver, and all the rest? (Who, for that matter* the Editor?) What is the point of these disguises? Is it to escape charges of libel, to keep out of the hands of the police, to . avoid recrimination from acquaintances and associates? The identities of these people appear to be known to many of your correspondents, and perhaps this provides a clue to the mystery; a cosy tittle club is set up, with the members knowing the secrets and the outsiders left in the dark, something like school girls talking pig-Latin.
Among the many annoying (to the non-English)quirks of the The Spectator, this is one of the more annoying and I would be grateful for an explanation. S. T. Fisher 53 Morrison Avenue, Mount Royal, . Montreal 305, Canada
In the inevitable absence of the Editor it can be revealed that Tom Puzzle, Bookbuyer, Will Wasps, and Skinflint are a pathetic part of the human flotsam of Gower Street, troubling no one but the Welfare. The Editor, when available, toils alone in a "simple room that is said to be plainly furnished with a throne and a prayer rug. The Editor is Laughingly said to ask no more titan that others see him as he sees himself: a god walking amongst men. —Ed. Asst.
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