ROUGH BOYS AND SMOOTH
SIR,—Mrs. Thompson continues to give such a grossly distorted picture of my Jim Starling's Holiday that I really must ask for a little more space in which to try to correct it. The boys are rough, yes—but only to the degree that most boys are. They are sometimes inattentive in class, yes—but again only to the degree that most boys are. And this, and their 'had conduct' (which amounts to nothing worse than eating sweets or reading comics behind the desk lid—not as Mrs. Thompson's horror would lead the unwitting to believe, the attempted lynching of the teacher or the raping of the school secretary), is never allowed to go unchecked by their masters. To equate them with some boys whom Mrs. Thompson and her colleagues apparently once failed to control and who prevented other children from studying for their GCE is utter nonsense. Mr. Pickwith is too firm a teacher to allow it—as even a cursory reading of any of the Starling books will prove. Her picture of the boys' out-of- school activities is equally unfair. They do throw soot bombs and chuck blankets in a stream, but only as counter-measures in the course of a feud with another gang of rough boys—and far, far out
in the country, where there is no danger of smudging or splashing any innocent bystander. Why doesn't she make this clear, I wonder. To use the word of an eleven-year-old Starling fan on hearing of Mrs. Thompson's criticism, she seems to be far too `squirmish' about these kids. I can only wish she had been a little more so in her efforts to give a true account of the book.—Yours faithfully,
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