Peter FLEMING (1907-1971)

Typed Letter Signed (“Peter Fleming”) to “Dear Mr. Lloyd”, who had evidently written to apologize for adopting Fleming’s pseudonym of “Strix”.

1 page 4to, Nettlebed, 15 July 1954.                        

An amusing letter. Lloyd had evidently written to Fleming to apologize for the use of his pseudonym – Fleming’s contributions to The Spectator were published under the name “Strix”.

“. . . I don’t think either of us need take any action to change our pseudonyms. In the foreword to a book called “Summer Lightning” P.G. Wodehouse once related how, having selected the title, he found that several authors had used it or were about to use it; and he finished up by saying that he could only cherish the hope that his book might one day be included in anthology entitled The Hundred Best Books Called “Summer Lightning”. I don’t think things have gone quite so far in our case but there is a certain analogy.”

It seems likely that the Mr. Lloyd of this letter was a History master at Chichester High School for Boys, who wrote for the West Sussex Gazette under the name of “Strix”.

Peter Fleming’s reputation as a writer has, for many, been eclipsed by the greater fame of his younger brother Ian, creator of the James Bond stories. He was, however, an elegant chronicler of his travels, eliciting Vita Sackville-West’s compliment that he had “an Elizabethan spirit allied to a modern mind”.

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