20 MARCH 1953, Page 5

A brief visit to the exhibition of Coronation souvenirs, if

that is the right name for the not very distinguished collection of objects—from ash-trays upwards—now visible at the Tea Centre in Lower Regent Street, has been almost enough to line me up with the Scottish Nationalists in the matter of the Queen's title. The intrusion of the Roman II between the E. and the R. wrecks everything, and the sooner its inclusion is ended, to my mind, the better. After all, prayers are offered weekly, and in some places daily, for " our gracious. Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth," and there is no reason to suppose that failure to indicate that a monarch of the twentieth, not of the sixteenth, century is the object of them renders them less effective. Let the full style and title " Queen Elizabeth II " be retained in official documents if need be. Elsewhere, I suggest, regard should be had both to aesthetics and to the feelings of Scotsmen, and the simple " Queen Elizabeth " made habitual. .

* * * *