16 JANUARY 1999, Page 24

The enemy within

Sir: I can't help with Alice Miles's specula- tion about the source of the Guardian's Mandelson loan scoop (Friends, enemies and a parcel astray, 9 January). But I should point out I was not — as she sug- gested — an industrial correspondent in the 1980s, nor have I ever written a biogra- phy of Arthur Scargill, sympathetic or oth- erwise. Perhaps she was thinking of my book about MI5 and the miners' union, The Enemy Within, which was first published more than a year after Paul Routledge's Scargill effort and very generously reviewed at the time by The Spectator.

Seumas Milne

The Guardian, London EC1