20 NOVEMBER 1953, Page 7

Comeback

The reform and revitalisation of Punch has been proceeding apace under Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge, the first of its editors (I think I am right in saying) to have seen war-time service in Portuguese East Africa. The paper, whose appeal to the intelligent reader had for some years not exceeded the appeal of sponge-cake to a gourmet, no longer gives the impression of being produced by a good but rather abstracted plain cook; and I am interested to hear—for its new astringency might not have pleased the type of reader on whom Punch has relied in the past—that the increase in its circulation after ten months of the new regime has run into five figures.