2 OCTOBER 1959, Page 9

THE OFFICIAL cuur of the Past is getting so obses-

sive that any piece of `history' is apparently con- sidered good business, even when its implications are directly damaging to the cause in which it is invoked. A British Railways advertisement which I have seen on several London Underground stations is centred on the fact that whereas in 1909 eight trains a day between London and Edinburgh averaged 8 hours 31 minutes, in 1959 fifteen trains 'daily do the distance in 7.38: in other words, that in half a century of the most intense technological development the average time on one of the key routes has been cut by less than an hour. One might have thought the railway authorities would have kept quiet about this lamentable informa- tion; yet they blazon it with every appearance of