12 NOVEMBER 1994, Page 34

Light blue waters

Sir: Fritz Spiegl (Letters, 29 October) ought not to be surprised at Alan Watkins's misattribution of the invention of the news- paper interview to W.T. Stead. For in the very same piece he asserted that the expres- sion 'social engineering' was coined by Sir Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), when in fact there was already, by 1899, a journal of that title in existence in America. The truth is that Alan Watkins, no doubt quite properly for a Cambridge man, is deeply scornful of any- thing that Oxford produces to instruct him, and prefers to paddle his own canoe in these waters.

George Chowdharay-Best

27 Walpole Street, London SW3