2110-4-5-27

Telephone 75 Maidenhead [ST - about Life of Lord Minto]

Taplow Court Taplow, Bucks

28th October, 1924

Dear Mr. Buchan

I have just finished your book and I do so hope that you will not mind my adding one to the very many letters that you must be receiving about it, just to tell you how intensely [underlined] I admire it and delight in it. It seems to me that even to the people who never knew him it must be a most living picture; and you have dealt magically with the balance of the book. One could hardly conceive the difficulty of choosing out just the salient

parts of all those years in Canada and India, and yet, though you have got it all comparatiavely so little space, there is not one dry word or anything that suggests a mere synopsis. How skillfully you have avoided controversy, and yet (ST - Lord Minto) Rolly's position stand out always so clearly and justly. I do admire beyond all telling the handling of the episodes between him and Lord Morley. How enchanting all the early years are, the life at Minto, the delicious description of the boys (and the foot note) on page seven, the lovely vignette of the mother. It will always be one of my favourite books, and I love to know what happiness it is giving to Mary Minto.

Do not dream that this letter needs any answer, but do accept my enthusiastic admiration and gratitude for having put this book into the world. My husband is absorbed in it now.

Yours very sincerely, Ethel Desborough