BR TO KATHARINE TAIT, 23 JAN. 1948
BRACERS 52613. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #480
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
27 Dorset House
Gloucester Place
N.W.1.

My dear Kate

Thank you for letter and cheque. I hope you have received $400 from Simon and Schuster.

I am very glad indeed that you have broken off your engagement to Amiel; I deplored it more than I said I did. He would have submerged you and made you a drudge, and perhaps in the end you would have murdered him. Don’t let pity lead you into taking up with him again; you can’t really do him any good. It makes my blood boil to think of his treating you so badly — conceited puppy!

I met an elderly legal big-wig in Hall at Trinity yesterday, who appears to be in authority at Radcliffe; he spoke very nicely of you, and warmed my heart by his praise. I don’t know his name.

Now if you were to take up with Tait I should be delighted, for though I don’t know him I feel sure from what you say that he would care whether you were happy.

The sort of nightmare you describe is not very different from one that I suffer from: I imagine myself behind plate glass, like a fish in an aquarium, or turned into a ghost whom no one sees; agonizingly I try to make some sort of human contact, but it is impossible, and I know myself doomed for ever to lonely impotence. I used to have this feeling often before I had children; since then it has been rare.

Peter had her gall bladder taken out; she is convalescent, and should soon be better than for many years. Conrad flourishes exceedingly.

I am very busy. In addition to my Cambridge work I do a great deal of broadcasting, and a certain amount of speaking, mainly on the atom bomb. I have become unbelievably respectable: I speak at the Imperial Staff College,1 Chatham House,2 and the House of Lords and I hobnob with the Archbishop of York;3 I broadcast on foreign policy the day before yesterday, and yesterday Bevin4 said just the same sort of thing that I had been saying. But next Sunday the B.B.C. is getting me to defend atheism against a Jesuit, which will perhaps cool the ardour of Archbishops.5

Much love, dear Kate

Yrs aff.
Diddy

• 1

  I speak at the Imperial Staff College On 9 December Russell had given the first of six annual lectures on “The Future of Mankind” at the Imperial Defence College, London.

• 2

  Chatham House The site of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Russell lectured there on “Atomic Warfare and Its International Bearings” (27 January).

• 3

  Archbishop of York Cyril Foster Garbett (1875–1955), the Archbishop of York, shared Russell’s views on the control of atomic energy. See Hansard (House of Lords) for 30 April 1947.

• 4

  Bevin Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), the British Foreign Secretary, had called for a greater degree of Western European unity in a Parliamentary debate on foreign policy on the 22nd. Russell’s talk was given on the 21st in a BBC series As I See It.

• 5

  B.B.C. … Archbishops A radio debate on the existence of God between Russell and the philosopher, Frederick Copleston, S.J. It has been widely reprinted. See 68 in Papers 11.