Eric Sams/Nieves Hayat De Madariaga Mathews: Letters 1987-2003   previously unpublished; © the estate of eric sams and beatrice cazac (Mrs. Mathew’s letters)

54.

21 July 1993

Dear Hayat,

   Many thanks for the bits of Bacon. I enjoyed the homosexual chapter. But I've never quite been able to see what all the fuss was about. I can't work up much interest in the topic as such, except that I do sometimes wonder what they did in Gomorrah-

   Thanks for the kind offer of Henry IV (1984) but I fear I have a dent where my bump of history ought to be.

   And I also fear I can't now find the Vickers review of the Oxford Shakespeare. All I can offer is the vague and perhaps inaccurate recollection that it appeared in the Review of English Studies, which seems to have disappeared from the London Library (no doubt at the binders').

   Yes, I'm sure that Steiner had set his heart on Cambridge, a name which is no doubt also set on his heart as it is said Calais was on Mary's. Or Vickers' too, I bet; or perhaps Oxford in his case.

   I'm recovering after the Gruner lieder competition, of which the highlight for me was a happy meeting with Hartmut Höll and Mitsuko Shirai, great pianist and great mezzo, and a magnificent duo of lied interpretation.

   All I can find of possible interest is the cutting enclosed.

   Sorry to be so barren. It's the result of (temporary, I trust) dehydration induced by exhaustion.

   As ever E.