In response to:
Dylan Thomas from the February 3, 1966 issue
To the Editors:
In your issue of February 3rd, Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien shows a disinclination, I notice, to accept Mr. Constantine FitzGibbon’s explanation of what really happened when Brendan Behan arrived at a B.B.C. television studio in an inebriated condition.
The professor is a hard man to persuade, but your readers at least may be interested in the comment made by Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge when Mr. Kenneth Rose, a Sunday Telegraph columnist, drew Dr. O’Brien’s article in The New York Review of Books to his attention.
He denied that he plied Behan with drink, observing “It would be like plying Niagara Falls with water.” On the contrary, he said, he tried to help Mrs. Behan to get him sober.
“As for Dr. O’Brien’s crack about the protection afforded to members of the ruling class,” wrote Mr. Rose, “Mr. Muggeridge assures me that there is no member of that august body whom he would not rather interview drunk than sober.”
Alex Faulkner
The [London] Sunday Telegraph
New York City
