Letter from James Ivory, Mumbai, India, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1968 September 17 : typescript signed.

Opening with "the new name of our 'sister' film is-- hold tight-- Decline and Fall... of a Bird Watcher" and jokingly proposing a new title for "The Guru"-- "Jenny's Big Guru Daddy"; noting that "there aren't so many Lovely World types [in London] this time as when you were here with me before. What's happened?"; noting also that now that he is living at a different income level, "everything and everybody is different. All so nice, butter wouldn't melt in their mouths"; admitting he has only spent one night in the new flat, with its bed "fit for the revels of a Catherine the Great"; jokingly warning "Don't think I'm satisfied with this flat. It's not after all the ultimate"; saying Fellini was in town recently, to meet with Michael about a part in his new film "the Satyricon of Petronius," but Michael turned down the part-- "it sounded most unsavoury"; observing that "I now have six [picture and/or sound] editors toiling for me. I get on terribly well with them. We go to public houses and eat sausages called bangers-on-sticks and play the pinball machines."