I WAS delighted to read Vitali Vitaliev's appreciation of A G Macdonell (January 27). A revival of interest in Macdonell's work is long overdue.
Most people who have any knowledge of his work usually mention the hilarious description of the cricket match in England, Their England. This episode, although rightly regarded as a masterly vignette of comic writing, pales into insignificance when compared with the rollicking satire on the excesses of German drama of the early inter-war years in the same book.
The description of Herr Rumpel-Stilzchen's Illusionist-Symbolist masterpiece, The Perpetuation of Eternity, performed in translation on the London stage, is a timeless side-splitting masterclass in the debunking of all that is pretentious in modern literature. This egregious, fictional theatrical spectacle, set in a salt mine of Upper Silesia, was so dire that one reviewer was moved to write, ''If this is Upper Silesia, what can Lower be like?''
Dare one hope that Mr Vitaliev's article will lead to a revival of interest in and a reprinting of the works of this unjustly neglected Scottish writer?
John W Elliott,
19 Gordon Avenue, Bishopton.
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