Bowen's Irishness

Madam, - I reject David Alvey's assertion (April 20th) that Elizabeth Bowen was not an Irish writer

Madam, - I reject David Alvey's assertion (April 20th) that Elizabeth Bowen was not an Irish writer. Her work is infused with that peculiar Anglo-Irish sensibility which left her feeling a foreigner in both Ireland and England, at home only in "the middle of the Irish sea".

The Last September and A World of Love are shot through with Irishness and nowhere is the landscape of north Cork more lyrically described than in Bowen's Court.

I do hope that attempts to exclude Bowen from the list of Irish writers is not due to her having been (whisper it!) a Protestant. - Yours, etc.,

AIDAN HARMAN,

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Brian Dillon Park,

Dillon's Cross,

Cork.