Letter: No tea, no sherry

CONTRARY TO your report ("`Fuddy duddy' Lit Soc tries to become a more hip soc", 13 June), the Royal Society of Literature is not moving from Hyde Park Gardens for lack of money but because our lease has ended. We will be going to Somerset House where we will continue to hold our lively and provocative lectures and debates. We cannot invite Jilly Cooper to tea or for sherry because we don't have tea or sherry parties, but she is very welcome to become a member of the RSL. If she joins, I doubt whether she will hear the name Dorothy Whipple, but she may well find herself involved in one of our campaigns: for an increase in the public lending right fund to authors for the borrowing of their books from libraries, or against the imposition of VAT on the printed word - something, I imagine, that the Independent on Sunday opposes.

MICHAEL HOLROYD

London W10