I THOUGHT the Observer was unnecessarily unkii on Sunday about
Peter Hope, the Foreign Ott'. spokesman. In so far as it is true that the FO 'the haughtiest of all departments,' which 'so' ceeds both in making cunning use of the pro and in keeping it rudely in its place' (and the I ' isn't so haughty or' so rude as all that. ao' succeeds in being cunning only with the toa papers, of which the Observer is honourably 11 one), it is to confuse the office with its ineumbe to take it out of poor Hope. To be spokes for an institution, right or wrong, is not the in admirable or dignified of jobs, but Peter Ho has seemed to some of us to fill it with some gra Although this paper occasionally betrays so thing a little less than wholehearted admiratt for the goings-on of the Foreign Office and ministerial head, we have never found th spokesman anything other than helpful, courte and friendly. This may be what the Obser means by 'backstairs bonhomie': we prefer believe it is the natural good manners of rather nice man.
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