Housmans bookshop at No 5, Cally Road

• I WAS pleased to see the January 4 review of Peace! Books! Freedom!, the book about 60 years of the Peace News and Housmans Bookshop building in King’s Cross (a building with which I’ve been associated for about 50 of those years).

The historic building has housed, and still houses, many worthy organisations which would otherwise find it hard to have a base in central London.

However one (very common) historical error is repeated in your write-up. Setting the scene for the “launch” of the building in 1959, you say, “in 1958, CND had marched to Aldermaston and given a generation a cause”.

The first of the famous Aldermaston marches was indeed in 1958, and was from London to Aldermaston; but it wasn’t organised by CND. It was organised – from the then offices of Peace News in Finsbury Park – by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC).

The nascent Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament supported it, and the following year CND did take over organising Aldermaston marches; however, once CND were in charge, from 1959, the marches were turned round to go the other way.

This reflected the politics of CND, being based on symbolic action and lobbying government, rather than the direct action aims of DAC which wanted to directly impede the functioning of the war machine.

It was DAC, rather than CND, which was more intimately linked to the aims and politics of the King’s Cross building; indeed, many of those in the thick of DAC were also involved in Peace News.

CND did eventually organise a one-off march to Aldermaston, but not until 1972, an event memorable for Hawkwind playing a set up against the Aldermaston fence.

ALBERT BEALE, WC1