Letter: Drain plagiarist?

Wednesday 12 March 1997 00:02 GMT

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Drain plagiarist?

Sir: The points of correspondence between Graham Swift's Last Orders and William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying ("Booker man hits back at accusers", 10 March) prompted me to take a critical look at Mr Swift's Waterland, a novel set in the fenland area of East Anglia.

I am amazed to find that the structure, page numbers and title headings are in all respects similar to the annual report of the Little Ouse Internal Drainage Board for 1989, which was runner-up in the non-fiction section of the competition run by the Institute of Drainage for that year.

GRAHAM HARRISON

Bath

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