Both amused by and respectful of tradition, Fleur Adcock was absolute in her confidence that some writers are better than others at what they do. Even this year she deplored the Royal Society of Literature’s adoption of what she saw as the lazy mantra that “all literature matters” and the alleged censorship of an article in its annual journal.
Her only reservation about signing group letters was the accidental alphabetical prominence of her name at the start, giving “the misleading impression that I am eager to put myself forward as the author of yet another letter to the press”.
