very close at hand, the parting of host and guest
as the Queen re-embarked on Bri- tannia. I will never forget the farewell look of the huge President. He was a man who had made a new friend and was now saying goodbye to her, and he looked so sad. It is a look that cannot be faked. He kissed her hand and Prince Philip gave him a Nixon- style grip on the elbow.
WE SCARCELY find misprints in newspapers annoying nowadays, unless we are feeling particularly liverish. The odd one even gets into The Spectator. But for my part I still find printing errors in books a surprise. I have been reading a couple of Dorothy L. Sayers novels recently, and there are plenty of mistakes to choose from. In Clouds of Witness (the Coronet edition, 1988), Lord Peter cries out, 'Heil! I'll have the truth of this beastly business.' I had never realised he was German. Later we learn that 'all his eccentric ties were accepted as wit'. That borders on the surreal, as does the sentence in Have His Carcase (NEL, 1975): 'He saw the receptionist beckon to the water.' She'd have been better off trying the waiter. There are several printing errors of an ordinary kind in each volume of the Paperback edition of the excellent Aubrey novels by Patrick O'Brian — humour' for 'honour', 'must' for 'most', that kind of thing, But it is not just cheap editions which now include such errors. Even a good publisher (like Heinemann) of a good author (like Ferdinand Mount) can print 'cornice' for 'cornice' (Umbrella, page 6). This is what the old scribes would have recog- nised as a minim error: mistaking a manuscript 'r' and 'n' for an 'm', or an `m' for an 'n' and 'i', and so on. I sus- pect that is how Richard Hough in his new biography of Captain Cook comes to refer on page 71 to 'Borettoes'; this should probably be 'Bonettoes', or Bonittoes', or 'Bonitoes', old names for the tuna.
Most such mistakes are 'self-correct- ing', as optimistic sub-editors say. Either the eye skims over them and the brain supplies the correct word, or in any case it is fairly obvious what is meant. But the more misprints occur (and there are more, now that the sup- * of unfrocked clergy to act as pub- lisher's readers is running low), the more distracting it is to read a new book.
Dot Wordsworth Frustrating thought. Much as I applaud the convenient bottles which allow me to enjoy the subtle, smooth flavour of the impeccable ale at all times, keeping them safe from a den of thieves is an altogether more awkward affair.
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