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I am amazed that according to John Davies and Alexander J. Kent in The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the?World (Books, 7 December), Soviet agents would not have been able to read ¡°Gloucester¡± on road signs and knew it as ¡°Gloster¡±.

They could always have consulted the Veliko?britaniia ling?vostranovedcheskii slovar?[Great Britain: An Encyclopedic Dictionary] (1978), prepared by Adrian Room with seven Soviet authors. It contains useful entries not only for ¡°Gloucester¡± but also for ¡°Gloucester cheese¡± (glosterskii syr) and, to increase their knowledge of pigs, an invaluable one for ¡°Gloucester Old Spot¡± (poroda svynei miaso-sal¡¯nogo tipa).

R. E. Rawles
Honorary research fellow
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences
University College London

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