LETTERS: Golden days for men of letters

From Mr E. Paull

Sir: With regard to your letters about the "myth" of the New Statesman's golden age (6 October), I read the New Statesman from the war until the middle Seventies, but how much of this period fell within the publication's "golden age" I am not able to say.

The golden aspect of the New Statesman for me, a product of a pre-war elementary school - never rising above the middle of the class in merit - was to see my letters sharing the correspondence columns with world statesmen and other eminent men and women. The gold was burnished when I had a letter placed directly below one from Bertrand Russell, whom I admired more for his philosophical thought than for his erratic political opinions.

Paul Johnson favoured my letters most during the time I took the New Statesman: perhaps in view of his move to the right, it was because my political views were grounded in my experience in the community, and owed nothing to left-wing dogma or intellectual theorising.

Faithfully,

E. Paull

London, SW16

6 October