Letter: Librarians who can recognise a teenage fiction winner

Sir: I have to agree with Alan Gibbons when he says, 'nor is the real Britain a happy employed and stable place where John Major is at ease with his voters'. But he continues: 'Poverty, racism and violence haunt the country and children's books must reflect that.' Surely not.

I grew up in a working-class home in London and read voraciously, E. M. Nesbit, Percy F. Westerman, G. A. Henty and Kenneth Grahame, among others. None touched in any way on the realities of my life in the Thirties, but they opened the door to the delights of literature and gave hours of childhood happiness. Let children have their childhoods.

Yours faithfully,

DONALD HOSKINS

Edinburgh

20 July