MANNIN

thanking him for his letter and saying she is glad you like ENGLAND MY ADVENTURE - a number of people seem to have done so, and to have liked it more than the previous two England books, ENGLAND FOR A CHANGE (1968) and ENGLAND AT LARGE (1970). I think perhaps the relating of places to people, as in the third book, does make it more interesting. My publishers would like me to do yet another book of this kind, this time going north of the Border, but though I like the Border country I don't think I will, as being now old, I find all the travelling involved very tiring. And three is anyhow a nice round number, and completes a trilogy! As does the novel I had out on the day you wrote, MISSION TO BEIRUT, the third of the novels with Middle East background which began with THE MIDNIGHT STREET... based on the life and death of Gen. Qassim of Iraq and to which FREE PASS TO NOWHERE (1970) was a kind of sequel. I will write no more novels, now, with a Middle East setting... there was a novel with a mainly North West Frontier of India (now Pakistan) setting, THE CURIOUS ADVENTURE OF MAJOR FOSDICK. For the setting of the 1974 novel I am at present working on I've gone to an island off the West coast of Scotland... ending with a note about the origin of her and her correspondent's surnames, 1 side 4to., Oak Cottage, 27 Burghley Road headed paper, 3rd March