Notes & asides.(Letter to the editor)

Dear Bill: I know the New York Times is widely read, but it's provincial of you to proceed as though it were read by everybody. Priscilla Buckley is an important historical figure in NATIONAL REVIEW and I think you should show the opinion of the New York Times's reviewer, Danielle Crittenden, to your readers.

Love, Aggie [Dowd] North Hampton, N.H.

Dear Aggie: Delighted to do so.

xx Bill

The New York Times Book Review, September 11, 2005, "Miss Buckley's School: Living It Up with National Review," by Danielle Crittenden

Exactly a half-century ago, William F. Buckley Jr. started National Review. The magazine would shape conservative politics for more than a generation. But it was not ideology alone that established the Buckleys as the first family of American conservatism. It was a style, a sensibility and a charm.

Bill Buckley's written and televised manifestation of these qualities earned him international celebrity. Yet for the small band of writers and intellectuals for whom National Review became a second home, the style and sensibility that often mattered most were those of Bill's dedicated elder sister, Priscilla.