5 SEPTEMBER 1931, Page 26

In a pie compounded by one who knew Palmerston, who

was Irish born, soldiered in India, served twenty-four years in the House of Commons and was a popular party Whip, as was the late Lord Rathcreedan, much more widely known as Captain Cecil Norton, plums must be numerous—none the worse some of them for being a little long in bottle. Put your thumb any- where into Memories of a Long Life (Lane, 10s. 6d.), and it is all Lombard. Street to a China orange that you will pull out some- thing to instruct, delight or tickle. There was the man who put Gladstone right and of whom the G.O.M. observed : " A very clever young man, but singularly unattractive." Members of the House of Lords when the famous Veto Bill of 1910 was being fought were divided into " hedgers " and " ditchers," the latter still surviving as the clan of "diehards." When Moriarty was tracing his ancestry back • to Noah in the Ark, " Well then, my boy (countered O'Flaherty), let me tell you that at that time the O'Flahertys had a boat of their own." Captain Norton heard Mr. Winston Churchill's first speech in the House, "and Tim Healy, near whom I was sitting, made this remark : ` That boy will do.' " Within the covers of this miscellaneously varied volume several very pleasant hours are wrapped up.