13 SEPTEMBER 1997, Page 32

Remote response

Sir: Peter Duffell's letter of 6 September quotes T.S. Eliot's 'Somebody said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did. . . . "

I have always wondered who in fact can have made so silly a remark. Indeed, I actu- ally had the temerity to put that question to Eliot himself, when he came to tea with me in Oxford 60 years ago — the occasion is recorded in the late E.W.F. Tomlin's 1988 memoir of the great man — and I well remember his only response being a sar- donic smile.

Michael Cullis

Peel House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire