25 OCTOBER 1957, Page 7

MR. MUGGERIDGE'S prematurely famous article on the Monarchy in the

Saturday Evening Post turns °tit to be a skilful and sophisticated piece of de6Linking. Admittedly in the end he comes down on the side both of Monarchy as an institution and of the present Monarch as an individual, but as he had on the way lost no opportunity to dis- parage the Queen and all her relations, his con- clusions do not carry much conviction. In an attempt to show that it would be a mistake to assume from the Queen's popularity that her throne is secure, he drags in King Farouk as well as the Romanoffs, and, most surprising of all, drench anti-British feeling in 1940. But apart from some bad history and retailing gossip, 'it is duchesses not shop assistants who find the Queen dowdy, frumpish and banal,' which is untrue on two levels—the Queen is not 'dowdy,' etc., nor if it had appeared in this country or even in America at a different time. Mr. M uggeridge has said several times that it was commissioned long ago, but since it refers at length to Lord Altrincham's article, it was evidently written or anyway revised within the last two months, and he must have been aware that the magazine was bound to publish it at the time of the Queen's visit.