No time for poetry
Sir: What an agreeable portrait Sue Cam- eron suggests of my father's life as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service (Wanted: the next Sir Humphrey', 3 February)! As the sun sets over Parliament Square, the faithful staff are sent home early (patted on the head by their avuncu- lar boss, perhaps?) while the sage retires to his quiet office to ponder deep problems of prosody, rhyme and diction.
The true picture is more prosaic: his life in the years during and after the war was of continuous toil. In the occasional moments when there was nothing having to be done within the hour, there was a 'cold table' laden with slower-moving but difficult problems to which he would turn. Also: Edward Bridges never edited his father's poems, nor did he think that necessary — I never heard him mention the possibility. Bridges
Great House, Orford, Woodbridge, Suffolk
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