WRITER Candida Lycett Green has resurrected Harry Beddington, one of the most famous of Forest humourists, who died over a decade ago.

In her column 'Unwrecked England' in the July edition of The Oldie magazine, Green writes of a visit to Newnham where she says she talked to Harry Beddington who was leaning over his garden fence in a Newnham back street.

And in an accent she describes as a mixture of broadest Gloucestershire and widest Welsh and with a pipe stuck permanently in his mouth, Beddington spoke to her for quarter of an hour before she understood a word he was saying.

" 'There yunt many people outzide the Vorest as da knaw where 'tis,' is more of less what he told me, 'and there's many people in the Vorest as don't knaw one quarter of thair own village let alone all t'other villages, the bruks and strames and 'oods as da stretch vram Newent in the Narth to Chepstow in the Zouth. Zum on um da 'ardly knaw anything more than thair own bit o' green and the quickest woy to Gloucester'," she writes.

Local author and farmer Humphrey Phelps has written to The Oldie editor, Ian Hislop, describing the interview as a "glaring falsehood."

"This is the most extraordinary thing I have ever read. Harry Beddington did not live in a back street, and he never lived in Newnham and he's been dead for at least 12 years," he writes.

Mr Phelps told the Review: "No doubt Mr Beddington would see the funny side. But this is a glaring inaccuracy. There are other mistakes in the piece but an interview with a dead man really does stretch the imagination."

Among her hobbies, Green, daughter of the late Sir John Betjeman, lists touring England by horse.