THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
Never can Fleet Street have come to so sorry a pass. The faces are long and ready to bitch; the backs are padded against stabs: never has the place been further removed, meta- physically, from that now distant and gol- den-seeming age which Hugh Cudlipp once memorably recalled, when speaking of Frank Owen, that he had been born with a silver knife in his back. The knives in the back are still there. They are now plated.
It now is becoming evident that the days of the Daily Mail are drawing, not at all peacefully, to their close. I learn from what would, in the corridors of Whitehall power, be called a very high source that 'there are No talks going on at the moment for an Express-Mail merger. The Express would be glad to take over the Mail! but is Barkis willin'? There is no one there to talk to.'
Lord Rothermere, head of Associated Newspapers and of the Mail empire, is sev- enty-three, and reportedly tired. He is going off on holiday. It does not seem he wants to talk. Who else is there, however? It begins to look as if the Mail may fall into the Express lap, like not so much a ripe as a rotten plum.
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