12 JUNE 1947, Page 26

Forty Years In and Out of Parliament By Sir Percy

Harris (Melrose. 16s.) SIR PERCY HARRIS has spent twenty-five years in the House of Commons as a private Member, and private Members see quite as much of the game as Ministers, and from a much more detached point of view. Sir Percy saw a great deal, particularly in the ten years from 1935 to 1945, in which he served as Chief Whip of the small Liberal Party in the House. His book is of interest rather for its sidelights on personalities than for any profundity of political discussion, and there is rather a tendency to attribute well-known observations to someone other than their reputed authors. It was, for example, Mr. Baldwin, not someone in the gallery," who said the members of the 1919 Parliament looked like a lot of hard,-faced men who had done well out of the war. One curious incident that finds record is an interview between Neville Chamberlain and Sir Archibald Sinclair in April, 1940, Sir Percy being also a participant, in which the Prime Minister asked the Liberal leader whether he knew that his house at Caithness was in a prohibited area, that his telephone had been tapped, and that a recent conversation he had had with his colleague Harcourt Johnstone had been recorded. At the

1945 election Sir Percy, like most Liberals, was beaten, but he had

been a pillar of the L.C.C. before he went into Parliament in 19°6, and now he is back there again at the age of 70 as one of a Pro- gressive party of two. So he may add an- appendixtto his memoirs yet.