It must have been difficult for her when she was alive and always being confused with the film star. Elizabeth Taylor was a gentle, nervous, shy woman and a novelist whose worth has gone on being recognised since her death in 1975. She is better than Barbara Pym and Pamela Hansford Johnson, not quite as good as Elizabeth Bowen or Muriel Spark - I would put her on a par with Anita Brookner of the women writing now. She is intelligent, perceptive, a careful, elegant but never self-conscious stylist and her novels are about the sort of people she knew, the English middle classes - though one of her fine short stories, The Devastating Boys, moves sharply away from that comfort-area to tremendous effect.

Above all, she bears re-reading. I am embarking on a journey through her novels again, having kept some of the old Virago editions, and bought a few more in charity shops recently.

Monographs on individual writers, except for the Great Names, are out of fashion -publishers probably feel they would not sell. They could be right. There was an excellent series published by the British Council for years, called Writers and their Work - they were pamphlets rather than books, and they were an excellent introduction to a wide range of writers. I wish they could be re-introduced and brought up to date. One on Elizabeth Taylor would not come amiss. Or on Brookner for that matter.

Maybe Long Barn Books should think of reviving the idea.