Letter: Mystery of Lewis's suicide

WITH regard to my piece on Alun Lewis and Frieda Aykroyd's response (Review, 20 March): I must apologise to Mrs Aykroyd for misspelling her name and for getting the colour of her hair wrong. The other matters she raises are more problematical. I had no intention of presenting a 'harsh' portrait of her, as she seems to think, nor an unharsh one. I simply tried to set down the facts, so far as I could ascertain them. Evidently her love for Lewis did not impinge on her love for her husband, and vice versa.

'There is no mystery,' she concludes, about Lewis's death. I happen to think that self- slaughter, as Hamlet calls it, is about as mysterious and terrible an event as can be imagined - and tried to throw what light on it I could.

William Scammell

Aspatria, Cumbria