Jon Halliday

SIR: Michael Howard’s review article on the Korean War (LRB, 26 November 1987) does a disservice to serious historical writing. In the first column, he writes that the Americans ‘accepted … an ad hoc division of the country along the 38th parallel’. Anyone who has read anything about Korean history knows that the division at the 38th Parallel was proposed by the Americans in August 1945 (because...

SIR: Frank Walbank’s second letter (Letters, 18 December 1986) only muddies the waters. He makes four points. First, that my claim that there was a visit to the PRO by one or more Albanian researchers after 1972, and, specifically, shortly before the death of Shehu in 1981, is ‘unattested’. Second, that by making this claim, I ‘shifted [my] ground’. Third, that I have failed to produce evidence...