In the main, the reviews of I.P. [Imperial Palace] have been excellent. But it is curious that 2 out of 3 of Max’s papers were excessively rude about it, the third (Sunday Express) was fulsome. I wrote privately to the Editor of the Standard pointing out grave misstatements in fact in Bruce Lockhart’s article on it. He could offer no defence whatever. Similarly I protested to the editor of the Times Lit. Supplement about its assertion that I had been imitating Priestley’s fashion of length, for the sake of gain. . . . Maugham’s Cakes & Ale is 1st rate. But easily the finest of all recent novels is D.H. Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gipsy. Nothing else exists by the side of it. Believe me. It is marvellous, truly.