Letter: Off with his head

THE FAMOUS parody of AE Housman ("What, still alive at twenty- two./ A clean, upstanding chap like you?") was written by Hugh Kingsmill, not by Henry Reed as Gilbert Adair states (The Guillotine, Culture, 1 August). It was published in Kingsmill's The Table of Truth,a volume of parodies that appears to have been at least as influential as Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland since many of its subjects, from Lytton Strachey to HG Wells, have recently featured in Mr Adair's series of "Twentieth-Century Classics That Won't Last".

MICHAEL HOLROYD

London W10