6 MAY 1955, Page 10

WILBRAHAM COOPER, who died in London this week at the

age of 79, held for many of the inter-war years an ill-defined but invaluable position on the staff of the Spectator. He was a sound leader-writer and a shrewd, though generally cautious. adviser on editorial policy. It was as a proof-reader that he excelled. 'Little, if anything, escaped his unerring eye,' wrote Wilson Harris in his autobiography. The truth was that nothing did. Derek Verschoyle, a former colleague, writes about him in our correspondence columns. P H AROS