10 NOVEMBER 1950, Page 20

"Parliament House" SIR,—May I be allowed to correct Mr. Harold

Nicolson on one rather important point. In his kind allusion to my book Parliament House, in his Marginal Continent of November 3rd—and I am honoured to know that he has enjoyed reading the book—he states that I may be right in thinking that M.P.s bow to an imaginary altar, and not to the Speaker as such. This, Sir, is precisely what I do not think! This is a legend which, in my view, has grown up, and Mr. Nicolson has done me a great service in drawing my attention to what may be an obscurity in my own attempt to correct it. And I trust he will forgive me if I have misled him. I must plead the great compression necessary in a work of this kind which renders the misreading of a footnote only too