Old hat
Sir: Frances Donaldson's review of the two reprinted Michael Arlen books contains a surprising sentence. `The spread of education may not have done much for world peace but it has raised the standard of best-sellers.' De- pending, surely, on one's interpretation of the words 'education' and `standards?'
Personally, in my uneducated fifties, I can still read Arlen with enjoyment—though I'd have thought Piracy a better novel than The Green Hat. In the former Arlen wrote . . for never . . . has there been a tale about a merely physical bond. To make a tale there must be a vow; . . . and that vow must be upheld or broken. There are no other tales than these, there are only experiments.'
The Green Hat, thinks Lady Donaldson, lacks intellectual or emotional content. It is curious to turn from her review to that in the New Statesman, where we read that Iris's world was nostalgic, small, self-indulgent and rich, far beyond the reach of most of her titillated readers. Twiggy's, depending on neither birth nor money, is classless, hard- working, duller, and has nothing to be nostalgic about.'
Elizabeth Hare The Old Tiled House, Red Cross Lane, Cambridge
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