Lennon and Squiggle, Precedent Bush the Younger, The Sound of Mucus, and Apollo Treed

John Lennon

John Lennon

Published: 11 January 2013

Sir, - James Campbell says that in The John Lennon Letters, the editor "Hunter Davies writes that John was forbidden to disclose in correspondence with fans that he was married to Cynthia Powell" (December 21 & 28, 2012). Forbidden to dwell on, maybe, but "disclose"? That can't be right, because we fans all knew Lennon's marital status from the start. I remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show the first time the Beatles appeared on it in February 1964. (Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a teenage girl . . . .) As I recall it, an arrow appeared on the screen pointing to John, with some such wording as "sorry, girls - he's married".

JUDITH NELSON

37 Branch Street, #4, Boston, Massachusetts 02114.

John Lennon

John Lennon

Published: 18 January 2013

Sir, - I take my cue from Judith Nelson (Letters, January 11), who amends a point in The John Lennon Letters, edited by Hunter Davies. The flaw she spots is not an isolated one. In particular, James Campbell's review (December 21 & 28, 2012) might have informed your readers that Davies's transcriptions of the letters (if they are his?) are most unreliable, as one can easily tell by comparing them with the facsimiles printed alongside. They cannot have been checked very carefully.

Matter treated as unreadable (including telephone numbers for Warner Bros and (Dave?) Brubeck) is often easy to read, and mistakes, omissions and other oddities abound.

Sometimes the errors are trivial, sometimes not. A straightforward remark about how John writes the letter "e" is thought instead to be possibly about Ecstasy. Three lines are omitted from Letter 17. "Cynthia" appears bizarrely as "Maximum Cyn", "Germanshire" as "Germanstine", "miss ness" as "missus", "3 clocks" (very Lennon) as "3 o'clock", "Try again" in what is clearly an early version of "Girl" (wrongly, then, said not to have become a song) as "Tell her now", "no aim [i.e. I'm] not queer!" as "no [?] queen" (Davies's "[?]"), "Seldom Loyled" (Lennon's rendering of Selwyn Lloyd) as "Seldom Loyal" (admittedly funnier), "5000" as "500" (record sales). A postcard to his son Julian is reasonably signed "Dad", not "John". And soon and on.

This is a pity, because the book is a compilatory tour de force, very revealing about the ever-fascinating Lennon, and also beautifully designed and produced. It deserved better detailed care from its editor and publisher. Perhaps the errors could be put right in a reprint? Hunter Davies does supply an email address for corrections, but, discouragingly, no reply is forthcoming.

HENRY HARDY Wolfson College, Oxford.

Bush House

Bush House

Published: 18 January 2013

Sir, - I refer to Zinovy Zinik's nostalgic essay about Bush House, Aldwych, for long years home of the BBC World Service (Freelance, December 21 & 28, 2012). I share his nostalgia, having worked there some twenty-six years. However, I must dispel illusions about the "Roman head" found on site. I recall our excitement when it was first brought up from a cellar where it had been gathering dust. Several of us spoke to Gerry Mansell, the managing director, and suggested it should be mounted, perhaps on a Roman-style column, and displayed prominently. He soon dashed our enthusiasm. Experts from the Museum of London had already been called in. They said it was not Roman.

Later they came back, having done more research. Before the Aldwych complex was built, they explained, there had been older houses on the site. One of these had been decorated with some sculpture. This head must have come from that house. Mansell added: "If it had been genuinely Roman the museum would surely have claimed it".

The "Roman baths" in the vicinity are similarly mythical. When first dug up they had, indeed, been assumed to be Roman, but later it was established that they were much more recent. They had been part of an English bathhouse - a "stew". Such stews often also functioned as brothels.

PETER FRAENKEL 272 Cromwell Tower, The Barbican, London EC2.

Sir, - Philip Norman, in his new biography of Mick Jagger, evidently considers the lyric of (Norman's spelling) "she blew mah nose and then she blew mah mahnd" to be rock's first reference "ever to snot". Your reviewer James Campbell quietly calls this Norman "reading lyrics in his characteristic way". I call it misreading to come up with only snot when there's blow. As any of the old Beale Street bluesmen would have known, the New York city divorcee with her roses supplies some mind-blowing blow, or cocaine, for the noses. As to other connotations of blow, it shouldn't be my job to provide the most obvious of readings. Suffice it to say snot is a poor third in the running.

ANNE MARGARET DANIEL

New School University, 66 West 12th Street, 9th Floor, New York 10011.

Sir, - Kate Womersley errs in her reference to the myth of Apollo and Daphne when she writes of "Apollo turning a woman to foliage".

It is not the sun god who transforms Daphne into a laurel tree. Quite the opposite: as he chases after the comely naiad, Apollo very much wants her in her original nymph form. It is Daphne's father, the river god Peneus (at least in Ovid's version), who, answering her plea for help, effects the arboreal metamorphosis precisely to save her from Apollo's unwanted attentions.

BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN 7 Rivington Street, New York 10002.