James Lees-Milne, 19 de Janeiro de 1976

This morning there arrived by post from Switzerland a Xerox sent by Ali Forbes of a letter written to him by Stephen Spender, abusing me. In it Stephen says he has always loathed the sight of me, and disliked my very appearance, which is that of a sinister undertaker who with his spade thrusts moribund, not yet dead corpses into the grave.That he sees my soul as a brown fungus upon a coffin, etc. That he has never spoken more then a dozen sentences to me in his life. Now this is pretty mischievous of Ali Forbes, I consider. I am affected by Stephen Spender's letter. No, not gravely, because I do not like him and know that what he writes is pretentious tripe, yet affected by the knowledge that there is someone alive who can write such disagreeable things about me.