29 JULY 1978, Page 17

Suez 1956

Sir: It was predictable that Anthony Nutting should take the line of allowing no honest or laudable motive to Eden and Selwyn Lloyd in what they did in '56 over Suez. But from hindsight we can surely now say with overwhelming conviction that we would all be in much better nick if what they planned had succeeded. The whole world would be better off if the Canal were still under our control and our prestige had not suffered so lamentably at the hands of Eisenhower and Dulles, and if Eden's nerve had not failed.

There is a plainly evident chain linking the sunset of Britain in both the Near East and the Far East — now both centres of paroxysms of upheaval and violence and human misery, to say nothing of the African scene of massacre and tyranny in what were once prospering economies under the benevolent British.

Thanks to those envious and jealous of us as a world power who succeeded in lowering our prestige, in place of the phlegmatic Briton, respected the world over, we now have

the pretty sight of the world of 1978 in ferment. 1 hope that people like Anthony Nutting are pleased with what they see. Marjory Heath-Gracie

Shorms, Stockland, Honiton, Devon