January 25, 2007

Art Buchwald

Robert Elphick writes: Art Buchwald never displayed any signs of depression (obituary, January 19) when, as a correspondent for Reuters, I met him first in Moscow. He took the opportunity of visiting the Soviet capital when Richard Nixon came as Vice-President in 1959 to open the American exhibition at a time of attempted détente.

Buchwald immediately stood out from the rest of us struggling to beat the censors for his wonderful satires on Soviet life. His first column described his journey by car from the Polish border “chased by wolves the whole way”. By his account he made it to the Hotel Metropole only by the skin of his teeth. For days after, the Soviet press fulminated against this infamous enemy of peace and progress, much to the delight of the rest of us suffering under the cosh of officialdom.

Magnus Magnusson

David Stuckey writes: I will always remember Magnus as a “man on the move”. When the BBC recorded Mastermind from Liverpool University, I interviewed Magnusson (obituary, January 9) for the Liverpool Daily Post in his hotel room. He welcomed me and suggested I sit in one of the two armchairs. I assumed he would sit in the other, but instead he leant against a table, lit his pipe and considered my first question. Then, as he answered, he paced the room talking all the time. When he had finished he leant again on the table and waited for my next question, after which he started pacing the room again as he answered.

It was a little unnerving, but was obviously his way of concentrating. And he was a very good interviewee: courteous, but constantly on the move.

Toni del Renzio

Christopher Dobson writes:Your obituary of Toni del Renzio (January 16) rightly concentrated on his career in the turmoil of the English Surrealist movement and his work in magazine design. But there was more to Toni than his intellectual brilliance. He was, for example, a skilful and energetic dancer, one of the first practitioners of the twist on London’s dancefloors. He was also a splendid cook.

One weekend while we were both working on Topic — ill-fated but often hilarious — he ventured into darkest suburbia bearing a haunch of venison and a number of bottles of a very decent Italian red. He marinated the venison overnight and then, combined with my mother’s Yorkshire puddings and my wife’s roast potatoes, produced a Sunday roast which, if not surreal, was certainly sublime.

January 24, 2007

The Rev Bruce Kenrick