Sir, - I would like to congratulate Hermione Lee and her co-signatories on their cogent protest at Oxford University Press's closure of their poetry list (Letters, December 4). This is not the Press's only cultural crime. They have also closed their music-books list in this country, and made their excellent commissioning editor redundant. This is also "a disgraceful decision". Oxford University Press have published many scholarly books on music of great value, including M. L. West's Ancient Greek Music, The Musical Mind and Generative Processes in Music by John A. Sloboda, The Concept of Music and The Science of Music by Robin Maconie, Michael Krausz's collection of philosophcal essays The Interpretation of Music, and The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works by Lydia Goehr. I don't suppose that any of these books made large sums of money for the Press, but readers who are seriously interested in music would be considerably worse off without them.
Oxford University Press recently opened an unnecessarily grandiose entrance to their premises in Great Clarendon Street. This irritated some of its authors, for, in spite of making a great deal of money, the Press is notoriously mean in soliciting contributions to textbooks and other works. Now that OUP appears to be becoming wholly commercial, it will no longer be able to exploit its authors, for no prestige will attach to being published by it.
ANTHONY STORR
45 Chalfont Road, Oxford