Mary Beard's should convey so bitterly one-sided an impression of my book on A.L. Rowse. His encouragement of fellow writers, his practical kindness and hospitality towards them, certainly bulked larger in my mind when I was writing it than the splenetic egocentricity that led him into all too well publicised excesses. It is humiliating for any author to have failed so signally in what he set out to do. I am reminded of Congreve's witticism that bad portraitists are obliged to write the name of their sitters at the bottom. So may I, likewise, ask LRB readers to accept that my view of Rowse is emphatically not that presented by Mary Beard. Richard Ollard External links Richard Ollard's page at Penguin Books Richard Ollard's page at Orion Books LRB Letters page, May 2000 Guardian obituary https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/07/guardianobituaries.obituaries1 References Obituary, The Times, 26 January 2007 1923 births People educated at Eton College Alumni of New College, Oxford Academics of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature English biographers 2007 deaths 20th-century biographers