Postscript . .
Not since the death of. Bulldog Drummond, she says, has a novelist dared to create a Mystery Man living it up in the West End while master- minding the downfall of the Senior Service; or would have expected his lending-library readers to suspend their disbelief in a trusted employee's head being turned by the simulated love of a dastardly traitor, or in a character who handled official secrets clearly living beyond his known salary without either giving him some such cover story as a wealthy wife or a private income, or seeing that it attracted the attention of the dicks. My correspondent ends her letter with, 'I am going to get. in touch at once with my fellow thriller-writers to consider protecting our pro- fessional interests against the amateur mis- handling of our techniques.'
* I boasted too soon when I claimed, a fort- night ago, to have bought the first copy of the New English Bible sold to the general public— at long before nine o'clock on Tuesday, March 14, the day of publication. A reader living in a Kensington hotel tells me that she had hers the day before, by kind permission of her book- seller, on condition that she took it away in a plain wrapper, and in consideration of her being ninety-four next birthday. And Lord Mancroft writes to 'flaunt a most outrageous piece of one- upmanship in respect of your copy of the New English Bible. I can beat you hollow! I ordered my copy as soon as the announcement was made, from Foyles. Slightly to my surprise, it arrived a few days later, at least a fortnight before the publication date. It was followed about a week later by an agonised squawk from the publishers saying my copy had been sent to me in error. Would I please keep it to myself, and not wave it about, or I should involve them in about ninety breaches of trade agreements?
'I need hardly say that I slipped my copy immediately into a drawer, where it joined com- pany with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, unexpurgated, which had been given to me about a month before publication by a friend who was involved in the High Court action over the book. I derive, therefore, 'a certain satisfac- tion from the fact that the only two books I've ever had in my possession that had been on the proscribed list are the New Testament and Lady Chattarley. There is a moral here some- where, but I'm not quite certain what it is.'
All I'm sure about is that this must be the first recorded instance of Foyles having delivered a book earlier than expected, and that this is the pnly field of human endeavour where I've come in third to a peer of the realm and a lady of ninety-three.
By no means the least helpful chapter in my colleague Katharine Whitehorn's helpful book Kitchen in the Corner is the one on drinks (`con- tributed by A Man'—and not, I may say, by me). Few books on winemanship trouble to point out, for instance, 'that white wine goes with carpets, red wine only with floors you can wipe clean,' or to explain the cheapest way to' buy beer, which is to take bottles to the pub and have them filled from the tap.
But I only half agree with the advice not to pay less than 6s. 6d. a bottle 'for French and Spanish wine.' My own advice is not to French wines at this sort of price at all, bui lo turn, for very cheap wine, to countries tht have gone in for wine co-operatives in a big way (e.g., Yugoslavia) or, where, alas, wages and the standard of living are low (Spain, Portugal, Chile). So those young and impecunious readers who buy Kitchen in the Corner (which is meant primarily for the young and impecunious) should scribble in the margin of p. 200 a reminder that they can get 5s. Spanish and 5s. 6d. PortugueSe wine from Yates's Wine Lodges in the Strand and the North of England, and that in London and the Home Counties Tylers have white, pink and red, sweet and dry, Spanish and Portuguese wines at from 5s. 11d. to 6s. 6d.—out of the list of eight I would pick the `Castanella' Spanish rieslings as perhaps the most interesting. Having scribbled in the margin, readers shouid then underline the advice given under the heading, `Parties'—'don't mix the booze . you can't very well stop a man getting drunk if he's that way inclined, but you can stop him getting drunk by accident.' Inexperienced hosts couldn't have better advice on how to handle inexperienced guests.
CYRIL RAY
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