'... What about (the collective) you: Are those of you who write tolerant of editorial changes or suggestions or reactions? ...' At Longmans, I had two editors, John Guest & Peter Green. John was a charming, exquisitely educated gentleman who ran what was then considered the charmingly, gentlemanly 'general' list of an otherwise unillusioned, money-oriented, publishing empire. Peter Green was his aide de camp who eventually became - & remained until the last year or so - the supreme boss of Penguin. I can only remember them ever making one suggestion for a change affecting the actual prose style. They kept me straight when I misused Ming for Chang & such details, details that Eton boys know about instinctively in a way closed to a Quaker educated lad like myself. But only in connection with the title of my first book did they urge me powerfully to drop an article. They wanted 'Run to the Sea' instead of 'THE Run to the Sea.' When it's your first book, believe me, you accept the advice of the big shots. But I've never actually forgiven them. Thirty years later, I still grieve over that missing 'the'. It was MY 'the', it added that lovely formal, brick on brick, quality which is the hallmark of all serious writing - certainly of mine. And those bastards made me go for that slick, ambiguous, snake-oil salesman alternative. Every writer complains about his publisher - usually that they didn't spend enough on marketing & advertising or don't bribe a sufficient number of promoters. I don’t hold any of that against those two chaps who were always marvellously kind to me. But I can't forget that missing THE. I'm too old to care now so that when it comes to the next two, there's going to be no damned compromise with anyone. I promise you. Scottie B.