23 JUNE 2001, Page 24

Judicial loan

From Mr Alistair B. Cooke Sir: My old friend Christopher Silvester (Letters, 16 June), who sold harmless Tory secrets to the press when I employed him in the Conservative Research Department nearly 20 years ago, would have paraded his erudition even more effectively if he had made clear that O'Connell was not the author of the famous unkind description of Peel's 'coffin' smile. It was actually coined by an Irish judge, John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), as O'Connell himself acknowledged when he quoted the aphorism in the House of Commons on 26 February 1835,

Alistair Cooke

London SW1