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I thank Matthew Feldman for his generally positive review of my book British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 1930-1960 (Books, 4 April), but certain areas require correction. For one, he is inaccurate with the basic details concerning Ezra Pound¡¯s MI5 file (the National Archives catalogue references should be KV 2/875 and KV 2/876, for example). Unfortunately, such inaccuracy extends into Feldman¡¯s wider version of MI5¡¯s history.

It is simply wrong to state that MI5 was ¡°as interested in the far right as in the far left¡±. As Christopher Andrew¡¯s The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009) amply demonstrates, the intelligence service consistently downplayed the inter-war far right threat, initially believing that the British Union of Fascists was motivated by ¡°genuine, if wrong-headed, patriotism¡± before ¡°reassuring¡± Whitehall that the BUF was a spent force.

And while an ¡°online search of files¡± at the National Archives might indeed turn up the modest roll of Pound, P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Gordon- Canning as right-wing authors with MI5 files, further research might suggest that this list is dwarfed by the range of files that were opened on the significant left-wing authors, actors, editors, dramatists, magazines, film societies and theatres of the era.

James Smith
Durham University