3 NOVEMBER 1944, Page 4

Not everyone has yet read Dr. G. M. Trevelyan's English

Social History, for the good reason that not everyone by a very long way can get hold of a copy. For the benefit of those who have not read it, I offer a literary problem based on a sentence in it. The sentence refers to a certain work, of which the Master of Trinity writes: " It is the best record of a nation's past that any civilisation has produced." That is putting it high, and not many people, I fancy, would divine what the work is. I might add, to limit the field of surmise, that it is in English, and it is not Gibbon. What it actually is I will disclose next week.