Palin drone
Sir: In Ferdinand Mount's column CA decade and its books', 23 December, 1989) I find myself cited as an example of 'the grimmest development of the 1980's. . . . the degeneration of the middle-brow market and its debauching by television'.
By his own admission Mr Mount's case is a bit thin. 'I offer only one exhibit, the Sunday Times non-fiction hardback list for 3 December 1989.' Now my name and my book had the misfortune to be at the top of the list on which Mr Mount's case rested, so this presumably makes me a prime debaucher and degenerator of the middle- brow market.- All I can say is that 210,000 middle-brows have currently consented to be debauched (at £15 a go) aided and abetted by booksellers up and down the country, who have eagerly accepted the profits accruing to enable them to continue stocking Xenophon and Stendhal and maybe renew the shelves in the poetry section.
But it's not just myself that incurs the wrath of Mount. My helpful and largely efficient publishers, BBC Books, are ac- cused of 'causing more damage to the environment than acid rain, "Pulp to Pulp" having replaced "Nation shall speak peace unto nation".' That the publishers of A.N. Wilson's Eminent Victorians, Bryan Magee's Great Philosophers, Alan Ben- nett's Talking Heads and David Attenbor- ough's Life on Earth (to name a few of their books of the Eighties) should be thus reviled is as silly as it is uninformed. Without wishing to descend to the sort of abuse Mr Mount dishes out, may I just say I found his column uncharacteristically lazy and patronising.
Michael Palin
68a Delancey Street, London NW1
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