National Benzole maps
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Sir,
In your May issue you reported in glowing terms on the National Benzole Maps just issued. Emboldened by your statement that “These maps . . . show . . . the tiniest by-ways . . . ,” I confidently set out on Whit Monday to navigate from Hungerford to Aldermaston while avoiding Newbury and A4, and got completely lost, as hardly any of the villages named on signposts figure on the Map. Unfortunately there is apparently no way of preventing advertisers from making exaggerated claims—it is manifestly ridiculous to claim, as National Benzole do in your June issue that “they show not only the highways, but the tiniest by-ways more clearly than any other maps of these islands” (clearer than 1 in. Ordnance Survey?)—but if one is to have confidence in the Press reviews of new publications, the reviewer should at least cheek the accuracy of his reports, and my experience, together with the suspicious similarity in the wording of your review and of the N.B. advertisements, force me to the conclusion that you had not made a practical test of these Maps.
I am, Yours, etc.,
Englefield Green.
J. G. Harbord.
As our report on these maps was based on a hand-out issued by National Benzole Company Ltd.. we referred this letter to them They reply as follows:—