Victor Lownes
Evelyn Friedlander writes: My late husband, Rabbi Albert H Friedlander, and Victor Lownes (obituary, January 12) were classmates in the same dormitory at the University of Chicago in the 1940s. He moved to London not long after Victor and wasted no time in looking him up. Victor gave Albert a Playboy Club membership, of which he made regular use. Every Tuesday he would have the excellent steak lunch, which cost ten shillings. Annually, Albert would invite Victor to join him at his synagogue for the Jewish new year and send him tickets. After a few years, Victor sent him a letter, saying: “Albert, after all these years, I don’t know how to tell you, but I’m a Presbyterian.”
Ralph Lloyd-Jones writes: Victor Lownes was a regular and enthusiastic user of Chelsea Library in the mid-1980s when I was an assistant there and he was setting up the Kings Road branch of his nightclub, Stocks. He could never get over the fact that books were free and that music CDs cost only 50p each to borrow. Sometimes when he couldn’t make it in person he would send one of the bouncers from the club to return his items. A rather wary-looking big bruiser in an ill-fitting suit would come in, place a pile of books and CDs on the counter and say: “Mr Lownes arskt me to fetch these back for ’im.”
Clare Hollingworth
Richard St J Whidborne writes: The fact that Clare Hollingworth (obituary, January 11) had learnt to fly in Cairo may help explain a somewhat enigmatic remark she made to me in October 1978. I had flown her from Hong Kong Island to my base in the New Territories. As this diminutive lady clambered from the back of my army Scout helicopter, she said to me: “I have flown with a great many helicopter pilots and can tell the good ones.” Ever since I have hoped that this was a compliment.
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Sir Douglas Wass
Sir Michael Scholar writes: Your comparison of Sir Douglas Wass with Sir Humphrey Appleby cannot go unchallenged (obituary, January 7). Wass was the least likely of senior officials to “defer insincerely to his minister and then arrange events to suit his own agenda”. He served successive governments with loyalty and was forthright in the expression of his views to ministers.