6 FEBRUARY 1988, Page 20

Double take

Sir: In your Diary (30 January) you com- ment on Peregrine Worsthorne's front- page 'exclusive' in the Sunday Telegraph about Kingsley Amis and the joint portrait. What Amis, Worsthorne and even you have been unable to explain is why Amis was prepared to pose with his former wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, for Sanderson wallpapers but was outraged at being asked to pose with his son, the novelist Martin Amis, for the National Portrait Gallery. Could the answer be that Sandersons were prepared to pay their `models' and the National Portrait Gallery was not?

Martha Noble

97 Queens Terrace, Brighton