25 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 5

• * * *

Scanning the front page of the Daily Express one day this week, I observed for the first time under the title a notice: "Controlling Shareholder Lord Beaverbrook." I might have observed it before, for it is not, I find, quite new. It has been there, to be precise, since October 12th. Why ? I have no idea. Lord Beaverbrook is no longer a director of London Express Newspapers. You can search the Stock Exchange Year Book for his name in vain. The nature and extent of his authority over the Express and its next of kin have been something of a mystery. So, incidentally, have Lord Beaverbrook's whereabouts. Just when he is said to have settled in New Brunswick, and relative tranquillity reigns in Conservative headquarters and other bombed areas, up he bobs in London, E.C.4 or W.' with a manifesto designed (but not successfully) to blow Conservative headquarters sky-high. Now the Express makes the position clear, and rightly, with a standing sub-head which I think is unique in journalism.