BEASTLY TO THE GERMANS SIR,—I write to draw your attention
to an article appearing in the Spectator of May 18 by Constan- tine FitzGibbon relating to a banquet in honour of President Heuss in 1958. Mr. FitzGibbon writes : When some years ago President Heuss visited this country as the guest of the Queen, the Daily Express reported that at a banquet held in his honour a number of persons had refused to stand and drink his health. There were, I understand, three men who behaved in this discourteous fashion. The Express omitted to state that they were all Beaverbrook journalists.
The truth is that the two journalists present were Mr. Cyril Aynsley of the Daily Express and Miss Anne Sharpley of the Evening Standard, both of whom deny emphatically that they sat during the toast.
Your paragraph is a serious attack on the integrity of two distinguished journalists and a gross 'reflec- tion on the conduct of the Daily Express during my editorship.
E. D. PICKERING
Daily Express, Fleet Street, London [Mr. FitzGibbon writes: '1 should like to apologise to Mr. Edward Pickering, of the Daily Express, and also to Mr. Cyril Aynsley and Miss Anne Sharpley for certain remarks made by myself which appear to cast discredit upon them. It was a serious blunder on my part not to have checked up on the facts before publishing what I did. It is, really, no excuse to say that I believed my source to be entirely reliable. I should therefore like to retract, as publicly as possible, any allegations, or implied allegations, of professional misconduct on the part of Mr. Pickering and of the two journalists in question. I was wrong, and 1 am sorry.'
We should like to associate ourselves with Mr. FitzGibbon's apology, and regret any embarrass- ment caused by the paragraph in question.—Editor, Spectator.]
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