FEW JOURNALISTS can have inspired more affection from his colleagues
than W. F. Casey. He became editor of The Times, he used to admit, as a stop- gap, because no suitable successor to Barrington- Ward was available; but he turned out to be a journalistic Mr. Chips, whose good sense, fairness and likeability would have made him very hard to replace but for his ill-health. His was an in- teresting career. None of his obituaries, I think, recalled that he won good opinions as an amateur actor in his Dublin days; and he had two plays put on at the Abbey Theatre at a time when the Abbey was in its heyday, The Suburban Groove and The Man who missed the Tide—not, as The Times obituary said, The Young Man from Rat/mines (which is the Irish equivalent of Sailor Beware). The Times also said that he wrote two novels : there were certainly more, though I don't think even Casey himself remembered how many. I can remember coming across one of them— called, I think, Zoe—in the library at Gibraltar : to his surprise, when I mentioned it to him, as he thought they were long forgotten. It is difficult, even now, to think of him as editor of The Times; Yet The Times could have gone farther, and fared far worse, than this thoughtful, kindly man.
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