Letters to the Editor
`The Establishment' Malcolm Muggeridge, Morley Richards, Hon. David Astor, Randolph S. Churchill, John Gordon, Arthur Mann, Frank Whitmarsh, Colm Brogan Some of my Best Friends are Scots Highlander Chinese Culture P. J. D. Wiles
'THE ESTABLISHMENT'
SIR,—You remark in an editorial note in last week's issue of the Spectator, regarding Mr. David Astor's letter, that Mrs. Maclean might have been lying. As it happens, there is no possible doubt on the point. Part of her hard- luck story was that a Daily Telegraph reporter had pretended to have a telephone conversa- tion with her. She sent a note from Paris in hee pretty, baby handwriting to the effect that no such call had been received. The Daily Telegraph's telephone records, however, proved 'beyond any doubt that the call had been received. Thus she was certainly lying in this respect. Lady Violet Bonham Carter and Mrs. Maclean's other champions did not, of course, reflect that if Mrs. Maclean was lying about her relations with one newspaper she might conceivably have been lying about her relations with others. Such persons do not, in such cases, reflect at all. My own view has always been that the departure of Burgess and the Macleans was most fortunate for us all, if only because, the Foreign Office being what it is, Maclean's drunkenness and homosexuality would assuredly have secured him ever more dazzling promotion, with the consequent possi- bility of his being ever more useful to his Soviet friends. Nor do I wish them any ill in dt their new life, nd only hope that Mrs. Mac- lean took her ress-cuttings with her—which she probably id, being a methodical, rather vain woman with a quick sense of humour. The lucubrations which appeared in the Observer, The Times and other newspapers of that type about the wrongs she suffered while waiting to slip across the Iron Curtain should be good for a hearty laugh at social gatherings in Russia or any of the satellite countries; and even the children should be able to acquire prestige by recounting, during the Marx- Leninism lessons, how their clever mother made complete mugs of Lady Violet, Mr. Astor and others Who constitute, in Mr. Fairlie's felicitous phrase, the 'Establishment.' —Yours faithfully,
Albany, Piccadilly
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
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