Calling his bluff
Sir: I am deeply honoured that Patrick Marnham should have woven his last Postscript column round me and my doings (12 February) but a little surprised that he should take such a sniffy view of the new technical developments now available to writers. Surely the point of these various electronic miracles is that (at a price) they let the writer get on with his job of writing and release him from much of the mechanical and tedious labour involved in cutting, editing, correcting, retyping, and so on. It seems to me that it does not matter a jot or tittle whether the finished, clean copy was drafted with a pen and ink, on a typewriter, or on a word processor. What does matter to many authors is that when working with a word processor the finished, clean copy is produced easily and at a remarkable speed.
However, Mr Marnham is astonishingly wrong, as a working journalist, in accusing me of advertising these machines, Contrary to what he wrote in his column I do not `speak into a new machine'. I have never dictated my work and do not propose to begin now. Nor, as he accuses, is any manufacturer paying me to advertise any electronic aid to writing. Ironically, the one product which I do advertise is a plastic pen which I find ideal for work as the peculiar nib has all the characteristics of a quill.
I eagerly await an apology from Mr Marn- ham. Hand-written, of course. Preferably inscribed on clay with a stylus and then baked.
Frank Muir
Anners, Thorpe, Egham, Surrey
Patrick Marnham replies: I am sorry. If Mr Muir does not want to be confused with others he should alter his appearance by abandoning his spectacles, growing a moustache and wearing a bow tie.
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