The praise everywhere accorded to Mr. Richard Law's recent book,
Return from Utopia, emphasises the importance of the assistance Mr. Law might give to his party if he could spend more time in the House of Commons. Mr. Oliver Stanley's lamented death makes it all the more necessary to strengthen the Conservative Front Bench as much as possible. Mr. Law, as a former Minister, sits on the Front Bench, but he has taken little part in debate in the present Parliament. With four years' experience of the Foreign Office, as Parliamentary Secretary and Minister of State, he could give the Prime Minister and Mr. Eden valuable reinforcement on foreign affairs days. Another thing Mr. Law's literary success
emphasises is regret that he has never been table to write the life of his father, Mr. Bonar Law. It is not his fault, for Lord Beaverbrook, who holds a number of documents essential for any biographer of Bonar Law, has not, I believe, shown himself co-operative in facili- tating reference to them ; and now he has spirited them away to the University of New Brunswick (where the former Premier was born and the peer's father was Presbyterian Minister). Bonar Law, it is true, was only Prime Minister for eight months, but he was party leader for eleven years, and he was, in many ways, a distinctive figure among front-rank politicians. It must be necessary to go a long way back to find a Prime Minister of whom no official biography exists ; the latest life, Lord Baldwin's, by Mr. G., M. Young, will soon be appearing.
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