WHAT'S COME over The Times? On Wednesday, for instance, there
was a facetious heading— 'Much Binding'—to the long leader, which wasn't, in any case, as long as all that : a mere, digestible half-column. The leaders, in fact, were all so short that there' was room for seven, in place of the traditional four. One, which ran only to eighteen lines—no longer than one of these Notebook paragraphs—made its one point and (a welcome innovation) left the reader in no doubt as to what the point was. I am told that there has been a sharp rise in the circulation of the Guardian since it dropped 'Manchester' from its title, just as there was after it put news on its front page—not, probably, as a direct result but because of the publicity that accrued to the paper in the columns of its contemporaries, and on the BBC. So it may be that The Times is feeling the Guardian's hot breath on the hack of its neck, and that this is the reason for the new liveliness and point. There are enough old Guardian men on the staff to take the editor by the arm and show him how to make a stylish and even a liberal-minded paper of The Times (if he, as a former managing editor of the Manchester Evening News, can bear the idea). Already, the days seem to have gone when a former Times leader-writer could complain, as one did to me some time ago, that although he was told that what the paper wanted him for was to do the sort of leaders he used to write in Man- chester, all his happy phrases and touches of wit would be carefully carved out.
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