Rejoinder
Sir: The Post Office being what it is, I have only just received your issue of 4 February in which the usually equable Mr John Byrne expresses his displeasure at my recent review of High Diver by Michael Wishart, who was himself magnanimous enough to speak of it to me as 'a thoughtful piece . . a long and not shallow opinion of my book . . . all your expressions about painting are extremely sympathetic and perceptive', adding, it is true, his opinion of my mind as 'unkind' as well as 'mercurial' and 'honest'.
Mr Byrne is as entitled to his opinions as he is to being seen to be plus royal isle que le roi. I am certainly sorry that some of my sentences should have left him out of breath as well as out of sorts. But I must assure him that, whatever he may think, very many indiscretions indeed were left unsaid, and many more by the author than the reviewer, as I am certain the former would be the first to confirm to him. I should, of course, have written only one coloured reproduction.
The black and white illustration of the Nureyev portraits conveys nothing it would have been fair to criticise without having seen the original, but I noted what Wishart wrote in his text. 'I was nervous during the preliminary drawings. My line was shaky and incorrect . . . My drawings were not very good . . . I made a last drawing. . . It was the only good drawing and from which I afterwards made the first painting. . . I later superimposed his eyes over the closed lids. Only months later did I add the longer hair flying upwards as in swift motion.' I still think I am right to remember with most admiration the earlier years when Wishart, to borrow his friend Nicky Haslam's phrase, 'painted land'.
Alastair Forbes 1 837 Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland
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