2110-6-8-30

Destroy

[Nowell Smith] [CROMWELL 1934]

135, BANBURY ROAD, OXFORD.

Oct. 7th 34.

Dear John

I have only just read your Cromwell & must just send you a line to say how much I admire & enjoyed it - truly a study and portrait of "reality" - the word claimed for his own perverse caricature by that arrogant & unscrupulous swash- buckler Belloc. Reading

the two books brings back to one very vividly noctes Ambrosianas in your rooms and Sandy Gillon's.

Your account of Oliver in his family in the penultimate chapter is perfect & deserves to become a classic.

No reply!

Yours

N.C.S.

P.S. Yes - reply when you can find any instance of "the Elder Liberalism" asserting that "violence can never achieve anything" etc (p.355). I don't believe anyone of repute ever proclaimed this as a "dogma": it is a caricature of such apophthegms as "Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae" and "Force no Remedy" which are not the

property of the poor old Liberals. I hope by the way that the "corporate discipline" which you set up over against "sleek liberalism" is not Moseley's Fascism!