BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 2 DEC. 1948
BRACERS 19857. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Trinity College
Cambridge1
2 Dec. 1948

My dearest Colette

It is an age since I last wrote to you, but I have been utterly overwhelmed with work. I am sorry I did the wrong thing about the Duchess of Atholl2 — I was careless and thought her corrections were unimportant.

Berlin was most interesting,3 and the people I saw seemed to me very courageous. But the problem is one that has no solution tolerable to them.

How lovely it will be when you are in Wales in the summers. I keep thinking about it.

Must stop — have to see pupils largely German.

All my love —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200864.

• 2

  Duchess of Atholl Katharine Marjory Ramsay, Duchess of Atholl (1874–1960), Conservative M.P. In 1945 she was the founding chair of the British League for European Freedom, an organization opposed to the Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe. She appears to have made corrections to something, which BR disregarded. Colette appears to have taken him to task for this. Since Colette’s letters are not extant for this period, it has not been possible to establish what exactly BR was referring to. BR was embroiled with the fall-out from his talk at Westminster School on 20 November 1948.

• 3

  Berlin was most interesting BR spent 22–27 October 1948 in blockaded Berlin at the request of the Foreign Office. He gave at least two radio interviews there and a (lost) BBC talk on 1 November 1948. He contributed an appreciation of Berliners’ courage in “A Letter from Bertrand Russell”, British Zone Review, 2, no. 17 (20 Nov. 1948): 2 (B&R C48.23a; 46 in Papers 25, forthcoming).