Reviewers’ double faults

SIR: In the past few issues, there have been four reviews of books that have been wholly or partly hatchet jobs on three of Britain’s greatest men: one on Churchill, one on Cromwell and two on Charles Dickens. None of these has taken the opportunity to point out for your readers that they contain serious errors.

It should have been known without checking, for example, that Churchill did not send troops into Wales to put down miners; nor was he responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign – no more than Charles Dickens was responsible for Mrs Dickens’s religion being opposed to family planning, or for her walking out on her children when the youngest of them was only six years old. Both claims are implied in the subheading ‘Poor Mrs Dickens’ added onto one review.

By repeating uncritically the content of flawed books, just as the books repeat errors from other flawed sources, The Oldie’s reviewers help doubly to mislead its readers, instead of helping them to make good choices of books that they may think of buying. Yours etc, Professor A J Pointon, Portsmouth, Hampshire