‘. . . A Vast Amount of Information' By CYRIL
RAY 'THERE are those, I have no doubt, who buy .1 a fresh set of reference books every year —on the office, or out of an expense account. Those of us whose expense accounts are indis- tinguishable from cash in hand earmarked for haircuts, or the housekeeping money, are obliged to be more provident : virtually everybody in my copy of Who's Who is now dead, and I have just bought my first copy of Whitaker's Alntanack since 1949. It is six shillings dearer than the last one I bought; has sixty-six more pages; brings me a little more up to date than I have been for some time on who is the Secretary-General of the All-Union Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and still professes (with every right) to contain an account of the
ASTRONOMICAL AND OTHER PHENOMENA AND
A vast Amount of INFoRMATION respecting the
GOVERNMENT, FINANCES, POPULATION,
COMMERCE, and GENERAL STATISTICS of the various Nations of the WORLD. . . .
One of the prime virtues of Whitaker for the hard-pressed hack is that it provides him with those telling comparisons you know so well. `The small nation-State of Israel . . .' he will write: then a rustle through the leaves to page 676, and he can continue, `. . . no bigger in area than Wales.' Or, 'Bonn, a capital city rather more modestly populated than Southend. . . (Pages 196 and 672.) `There's a fellow,' murmur his awed readers (or so he hopes), 'with a quick eye for a square mile. Tot up a town as soon as look at it.' Dear old Whitaker.
But thiS is a work that has its charms for idler hours. Here, for instance, in pages 355 to 491, are the names, ranks, titles and salaries of many and various servants of the public : civil servants, stipendiary magistrates, judges, senior officers of the armed forces, to say nothing of princes of the Church, at home and in partibus infideliutn.
What innocent enjoyment lies here! That rather dim young man one met at the Thingummies, who was something in the Ministry of Mind. Your Own Business . . . ah, here we are—an Assistant Secretary : £2,100 to £2,700. That boring wife of his said they had a boy at Rugby (page 540: £411 per annum) and a girl at Benenden (page 543: £375). Can't imagine any child of theirs with a scholarship. And I know he's a member of the Savile (page 1049: £20 down and £20 a year). Hm, wonder how he does it? Wife doesn't look as though there's any money on that side of the family. . . .
Let me warn intending purchasers, by the way. The titbits about clubs come only in Whitaker's Complete Edition : there is a shorter, paper- backed version at ten shillings which omits a good deal about countries overseas (such as the size of Israel); conceals from you the fact that Mr. Kobbero and Mrs. Granlund, of Denmark, beat Mr. and Mrs. Hammersgaard Hansen, also of Denmark, two—nil, in the final of the mixed doubles of the All-England Badminton Cham- pionships, 1957; and is altogether silent about the addresses of some 1,500 or so 'Societies and Insti- tutions,' among them the League of Welldoers (incorporated), which my own eighteen-and- sixpenny edition establishes firmly in Limekiln Lane, Liverpool.
There are some mind-widening indoor games to be played with the aid of Whitaker, and I can- not too strongly advise you to pay the extra eight shillings and sixpence and get full value. Is Eton or is Winchester the most expensive school in the whole Commonwealth? I'm not too sure about exchange rates, but the answer would seem to be neither : consider the $1,750 at Upper Canada College and the £A502 at Geelong Church of England Grammar School. Is it cheaper, would you think, to join a club in St. James's or a club in EC2? Think again : the en- trance fee at the City of London in Old Broad Street is £100 and at White's a mere thirty.
Mr. D.ornford Yates was born on August 7, 1885; Hungary grew 2,054,990 tons of potatoes in 1956; the President of the Republic of Iceland is a Mr. Asgeir Asgeirsson, and don't tell me that you knew it all the time.
Have I whetted your appetite? Does the eighteen shillings and sixpence burn a hole in your pocket • the size of the com- plete edition? I must be fair in helping you to weigh up all the pros and cons : you are too late, this time, to get some of the, price of your Whita- ker's back by writing an article on it for a weekly paper.
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