Letter: Profound contempt

SO John Le Carre has 'the most profound contempt' for literary prizes and a 'total alienation' from the system (Zoe Heller interview, 'Behind an iron curtain', Review, 1 August). It didn't prevent him accepting the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger for fiction in 1963 (for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) and 1977 (for The Honourable Schoolboy), or the CWA's prestigious Diamond Dagger in 1988, awarded for the corpus of his work.

Robert Richardson, chairman, CWA, Old Hatfield, Herts