Sir – Chris Koenig, in his welcome reflections on Isaiah Berlin (Remembering an Oxford Genius, Weekend, February 25), refers to “the heated debate going on (for instance in The Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books) about Sir Isaiah’s reputation and standing”, a ‘heat’ which needs to be put into context.

The ‘debate’ in question focused on the publication last year of two books: Enlightening: Letters of Isaiah Berlin 1946-60 (edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes) and The Book of Isaiah :Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin (edited by Henry Hardy), which received favourable and some unfavourable reviews.

One of the most unfavourable was in The Times Literary Supplement (July 15, 2009) by A.N. Wilson, who, amongst other charges, set out a case that Berlin behaved “duplicitously” towards A.L. Rowse.

As Michael Ignatieff recounts in his 1998 biography of Berlin, Rowse and Berlin detested one another, yet in 1952, in a letter to Rowse explaining why he couldn’t support his bid to become Warden of All Souls, Berlin did in mitigation write “One cannot live for 20 years on and off with someone as wonderful and unique as, if you’ll let me say so, you are and not develop a strong and permanent bond”.

An act of kindness, not of duplicity. In terms of Berlin’s reputation and standing, his status as a scholar and ‘historian of ideas’ (as he liked to fashion himself), has not diminished since his death in 1997: a new generation of scholars and commentators are engaging with his work on freedom, liberty, and what John Gray, in his 1994 study of Berlin, termed “agonistic liberalism”.

Further, we are all indebted to Isaiah Berlin’s literary executor, Henry Hardy, for his unstinting labours in preparing Berlin’s fugitive writngs for publication. Bravo!

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington