7 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 4

Reading of the death of the American writer, Louis Adamic,

I took down a copy of his now notorious book, Dinner at the White House, in which Mr. Adamic, invited to dine with Presi- dent Roosevelt on an occasion when Mr. Churchill was present, thought it proper to reproduce in the fullest detail the manifestly private conversations in which the statesmen engaged. The libel proceedings which Mr. Churchill found it necessary to initiate were based on the fantastic suggestion (in a footnote) that British policy in Greece was partly based on " the fact that Hambros Bank, the chief British creditors- of Greece, had bailed Winston Churchill out of bankruptcy in 1912." • Mr. Adamic's other books may have been very good ; I have not read them. Dinner at the White House does not fall.into that category.