REGARDING Tom Sharratt's remarks in "The Road to Nab End has me lost" (Letters, November 13), I am amazed at the mean-spiritedness shown toward William Woodruff.

This old (and I do mean old -- he is 85) Blackburnian wrote a moving, warm and witty story of his early life which has given pleasure and recollection to enough people to make it a best-seller in Britain, translated into other languages and read aloud on the BBC.

So he made a few errors, for goodness sake!

He was writing about a childhood 70 years ago. I don't remember Livingstone Road myself, but am told that Pendle Hill can be seen from there. Does that matter? Does it matter if one letter of the same of his neighbours on Livingstone Road was wrong?

I enjoyed the book so much that I wrote Mr Woodruff a fan letter and he was gracious enough to correspond with me, although he was in the throes of bringing out his "Concise History of the Modern World" at the time.

Twenty years before Mr Sharratt was born, I understand that the words Boulevard and Parade were used interchangeably.

Let us be generous. This writer has given us a picture of our town as it was for him in the early years of the last century and it has warmed our hearts.

Let's not nitpick unless, of course, we could have done it so much better ourselves.

RITA HOULDSWORTH, Rockville, Maryland, USA.