Trustworthy claim?

SIR – Both “Bunny” Ketton-cremer and my friend James Lees-milne – who arranged his donation of Felbrigg Hall to the National Trust – would turn in their graves at the Trust’s current “outing” policy.

But aside from questions of morality, in pointing this particular finger at the last squire of Felbrigg, the Trust may be barking up the wrong tree.

Some years ago I visited Felbrigg in the company of Dominick Harrod, whose parents, Sir Roy and Lady Harrod, had been close friends and neighbours of Ketton-cremer.

The Harrods had numerous homosexual friends (Sir Roy was himself bisexual), but (so Dominick informed me) they did not consider “Bunny” to be one of them, rather a celibate who had no significant sexual feelings in either direction.

So far, the National Trust has justified its assertion that Kettoncremer was a “closet gay” by pointing to one fact – that his undergraduate poetry appeared in a magazine together with that of Auden. They will need a little more than that. Michael Bloch

London W2