2 JUNE 1967, Page 27

Cheque mate

Sir: Randolph Churchill (26 May) has got some of his facts wrong in the Svetlana case (the sum paid by the Observer, for instance)—and perhaps this isn't surprising in view of the reluctance of newspaper proprietors and literary agents to dis- close confidential information about prices and suchlike. But innuendoes are a more serious matter. The suggestion that my former position on the Observer helped to give that paper 'the inside edge' is offensive and totally without foun- dation, as Mr Churchill mild have established if he had cared to check with the Observer or with Svetlana Alleluyeva's lawyers, Greenbaum, Wolff and Ernest—or, for that matter, with Hilary Rubinstein A. P. Watt and Son, 10 Norfolk Street, Strand, London WC2