Dear Editor,

I was recently given an opportunity to read some back issues of the Flyer, and my attention was caught by a short piece in which a reader criticised Mr. David Burnett for a review in which he described George Kelson as "not recognising good form if it was shoved up his nose."

It is a hard fact that although George Kelson was a great fly tier and salmon fisher, he was an even greater self publicist, and had a regrettable tendency to rush into print before he checked the facts out fully - or at least that is the charitable explanation. Kelson was an assertive man in an assertive age and he spent much of his life in dispute with others, not least R.B. Marston, the editor of the Fishing Gazette. Marston's problem was that Kelson claimed the patterns of others as his own; just one example of Kelson's disregard for what Mr. Burnett calls "correct form." For someone of Kelson's standing, this was a serious transgression, and the incident hardly enhanced his personal integrity.

So I think Mr. Burnett's criticism of Kelson can be justified!