Letters
Who's odd
Sir: Richard Ingrams is right about Who's Who's astonishingly blinkered editorial Policy (2 April). Dim civil servants, even when long retired, get in simply because they have the CB or CMG (decorations given almost automatically to higher bureaucrats); yet few showbiz/sports types Or 'names' in journalism. Entrants' statements are taken at face value so that some appear to have children by a second (though seemingly sole) wife, when really the offspring were by a first spouse (best forgotten, perhaps, like Bertha Rochester?), and the publication attempts neither to cut the maunderings of the vain nor to expand laconic autobiographies by People of Kremlin-like reticence.
But Ingrams is mistaken in assuming there is no rival to Who's Who — I mean Debrett's Handbook. I was the book's editor till January of this year, when I was translated to a higher sphere in a more august publishing house, so I can now say I have no special interest in plugging it. It was not flawless, God knows, but it did attempt to meet some of lngrams's criteria — men- tioning his own rather grand connections With one of the oldest English peerages, for instance.
Charles Mosley
2 Riverview Mansions, Clevedon Road, East Twickenham, Middx.
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