Manuscript Letter Signed by Joe Minott to Mrs. Rowland Evans ["Kay Evans"] in Original Envelope

Philadelphia. Very Good. 1978. Letter. 2 pages; Manuscript Letter Signed by Joe Minton to Mrs. Rowland Evans ["Kay Evans"] in Original Envelope (6" x 4"). "17 October [1978] / Dear Kay - / I have just finished / 'Lady Sackville' and am / writing to congratulate / you on the wonderful job / you obviously did to help / put that book together. // I do not know Susan / Mary well enough to write / her, but you certainly / may tell her, if you think / that she would want to / know, that I think it is / the most charming book I / have read for ages and that / I enjoyed every page of it. /// I have 'Portrait of a / Marriage' son of Harold / Nicholson, & Vita's 'The / Edwardians' so your book / fills a real gap in my / library. // Rainey & I are esconced / in a new house -- Tiny / compared to the one you / came to see and with rooms / only for two of our five / children (which is O.K. because / none of them live at home / anymore). We love the freedom and the fact that / the house stays neat, but we / miss a lot of what was formerly / central to our lives. Do / come see us please. Love to Rowly --and much love to you. / Joe M." Joseph A. Minott (1922-2009) was a American foreign service officer from 1948 to 1971. After serving in the Army Air Corps in England until 1945, he graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1948 and joined the foreign service. He was a political analyst at all his foreign postings. Mr. Minott worked in the U.S. diplomatic offices in Oslo, Norway, from 1954 to 1957; in Paris from 1957 to 1963; and in what is now Antananarivo, Madagascar, from 1963 to 1965. After returning to Washington, he worked in the U.S. offices in Cape Town in 1967-68; in Port Louis, Mauritius, in 1969-70; and in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1970-71. His wife Lorraine "Rainey" Disston Lukens Minott died in 2000. PROVENANCE: Rowland Evans was a provocative newspaper columnist, commentator and author who antagonized liberal politicians and championed conservative causes. He left Yale and enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942 during World War II and was discharged in 1944 because of malaria. In 1963, Mr. Evans and Mr. Novak began writing ''Inside Report,'' an insider's view of politics that was published four times a week until Mr. Evans retired in 1993. Mr. Evans and Robert Novak began their work as columnists in the early 1960's, a time when newspaper columnists wielded outsize influence in national politics. The pair pioneered in transferring that influence to the medium of cable television with the political discussion program ''Evans & Novak'' -- carried on CNN from that cable network's beginning. Rowland Evans and his wife Kay (Katherine Winton Evans), also a respected writer and editor, were mainstays on the Washington social scene, hosting many memorable gatherings in their handsome Georgetown house -- to which flocked influential and remarkable people drawn from journalism, politics and general society over the decades from the 1960s to the 2000s. Both Evans and Novak became more predictably conservative over the years, particularly during the Reagan years. Reportedly, both columnists voted for JFK in 1960 and for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Evans earned a place on Richard Nixon's infamous "Enemies List." Novak reported that Evans had JFK as a guest for the first dinner party the latter attended as President Elect. Kay and Rowland Evans has a particularly close friendship with Robert F. Kennedy, his wife Ethel and their family. .