Robin Holloway

Instancing the triumph in recent decades of a newly discovered baroque in my piece on Tovey’s writings on music (LRB, 8 August), I cited ‘above all, the Incoronazione di Monteverdi’. I didn’t mean what was actually printed – ‘Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea’ – in my (minority) view a dull work, highly overrated, and certainly not one which I’d choose to show as the culmination...

It is sometimes difficult to persuade the angry recipient (or other reader) of a bad review that one means what one says, has thought as carefully about the weight and tone of the words as about the arguments and judgments one is making; and has also pre-empted as fully as possible the inevitable objections. In short, one writes responsibly. Every criticism made by Christopher Wintle (Letters, 21 September)...