NO FOREIGN BOOKS
Sta,—The Government has provided a cynical postscript to Mr. Gerard Hopkins's recent article on the difficulties of book-production. The Board of Trade has recently made an order (overlooked, as far as I am aware, by the whole Press with the exception of The Times Literary Supplement) forbidding the import of books or printed music except on individual licence. It is difficult to imagine that the national economy will benefit very considerably by this restriction, since the annual expenditure on foreign books is surely negligible. On the other hand, we are now cut off from our most important source of contact with other nations at a time when our own publishers find it impossible to satisfy the public demand. The habit of restricting the country's cultural facilities as soon as it is faced by a crisis is one which the Government must break as soon as possible ; the Third Programme and the weekly periodicals have already been suspended once, and now we are apparently to receive for- eign books and music at the discretion of Whitehall.—Yours faithfully, 152 Poston Lane, Peterborough, Northants. DEREK SEVERN.
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