WHEN A FEW YEARS ago Sir David Eccles made a
tasteless and patronising reference to the Queen he was promptly set upon by Randolph Churchill. Why, I wonder, has Mr. Churchill been silent during the last few weeks? I can understand him letting off the peers : Lord Altrincham, he may have thought, was at least serious and well- intentioned, however misguided; and Lord Lon- donderry he probably considered too illiterate to be worth notice. But I am surprised that the treat- ment of the affair by the newspapers did not drive him into print. The initial silence of The Times. for example; and the behaviour of the Express newspapers. For some unaccountable reason Mr. Churchill did not include in his book What I said about the Press his first speech on this subject— which, as I remember, was an attack on Lord Beaverbrook and his papers for their republican- ism. It has long been the tactics of the Beaver- brook press to express great admiration of the Royal family, while losing no chances to say some- thing damaging about them. This hypocrisy has been particularly manifest during the last few weeks, as the Daily Sketch has noticed (a nice example of Satan rebuking sin). What can have deterred Mr. Churchill from weighing in? His departure from the Evening Standard, I had hoped, would free him from the inhibitions which may have led him to concentrate his fire on less important targets, Kemsley and Rothermerc; here, I would have thought, was his opportunity. But no.
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