2110-5-12-14

Knowle Hotel, Sidmouth Telephone No 5 Sidmouth

20.4.32

My dear Buchan

I have taken advantage of my leisure to read both "Scott" & "Caesar" again, more carefully & with more savouring of their taste - & I feel I must write to congratulate you again on both, especially the former. Scott is real biography, always interesting yet with what to me is vital - that care to give all that is relevant to a true picture of the man & his work. The summing up is, as it should be, the best part of the book. Your "Scott" is a masterly portrait in oils, while "The Duke" is merely brilliant caricature.

As for "Caesar" you have given so much in a small space that you have succeeded in rather putting me off any thought of a biography! For while you write with admiration you honestly bring out a distasteful aspect of him which for me has been obscured in many of the full-scale biographies.

Bye the bye, with regard to your invitation to look you up at Elsfield Manor when I lecture at Oxford, will you be there on 27th or 28th?

Yours ever,

B.H. Liddell Hart