Poor memory
Sir: Richard Ingrams tears a strip off 'W. J. West, historian' (Letters, 20 October) for claiming that, by the summer of 1963, Ingrams had been editing Private Eye `without a break' for three years. Ingrams states that Private Eye began publication in 1961, and that he 'took over as editor the following year'. I know all this is a long time ago, and no one can be expected to remember things too clearly, but I don't recall Ingrams 'taking over as editor' until the world-famous coup of September 1963, when he got his man Rushton to write me a note suggesting that, as former editor, I should not bother to return from holiday. Could we get a real historian onto this important question before we are all dead? If we can't get this straight, how will we ever know for certain whether Claud Cock- burn was the notorious 'fourth man', or whether it was not in fact David Frost who
just `It's all right, darling, he's advising me.' first started Private Eye from his mother's bedroom in Beccles in 1959, as Patrick Marnham alleges.
Christopher Booker The Old Rectory, Litton,
Bath
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