BR TO THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN, 15 JUNE 1948
BRACERS 92501. ALS. McMaster
Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Penralltgoch
Llan Ffestiniog
Merioneth
15 June 1948

To the Editor of the Manchester Guardian

Sir,

The review of Professor E.M. Butler’s The Myth of the Magus in your issue of today seems to me to miss the whole point of a very interesting piece of work. The reviewer complains that she uses fact and fiction indiscriminately. But her thesis is that men’s myth-making traditions demand biographies of a certain pattern, and supply them in spite of great differences in the sub-stratum of actual history. It is not true that “she uses her sources quite indiscriminately”. They are used, not to ascertain merely what happened, but how what happened was distorted. Estimates are subjective, but for my part I found the book both delightful reading and highly informative.

Yours etc.
Bertrand Russell.