Postscript . .
I AM sorry to see H. V. Hodson translated from the editorial chair of the Sunday Times. I was on his staff for yyears; hardly ever agreed with anything he said or wrote; was never made to write anything I didn't want to; and never received anything but kindness—and the most courteous kindness—at his hands. 'I may be a Sunday Times writer, but I'm a typical Observer reader,' was the phrase with which I could always disarm him.
There was a time, not many months ago, when Fleet Street (which must be regarded in this con- text as running up Gray's Inn Road) fully ex- pected Harry Hodson to be succeeded as editor by Frank Giles, the newly-appoitited foreign editor of the paper and, until a few months before, the highly-regarded Paris correspondent of the Times. Then the tipsters began to mention William Rees-Mogg, the young (thirty-three) Tory candidate and political writer who had re- vivified the paper's City pages. Then there was talk of Alastair Dunnett, who has made such a success of the Scotsman, coming south. So it was a bit of a surprise on Sunday to see that the mantle had fallen upon C. D. Hamilton—a bit of a surprise, but not a staggering one, for Hamilton, though he has not been a writing journalist for a long time—not, I think, since his days as a very young reporter in Newcastle—has been a considerable power in the background. As a journalist, he has always been more of a staff officer than a front-line soldier. But as chairman of the editorial board, he had been virtually editor of the paper during Harry Hodson's recent extensive foreign travels.
For some years now, Hamilton has been the chief architect of the paper's rising fortunes: it was his policy, during Lord Kemsley's time and since, to use ambitious and expensive serials and loudly trumpeted features as circulation-builders, including Montgomery's writings: he was on Monty's staff in the war. Since the Thomson take- over it has been easier for him to implement his other favourite policy of backing the paper's young writers, and although Rees-Mogg has not soared quite as far as the editorial chair, it is sig- nificant that he has been promoted (and the Sun- day Times announcement specifically used the word 'promoted') to the newly-created job of Polical and Economic Editor. Hamilton is not, as Hodson was, a leader-writer, and it looks as though Rees-Mogg will set the political pattern of the paper while Hamilton sees that it goes on in- creasing its circulation. Not that the paper's poli- tics will change, but Rees-Mogg is the newer sort of Tory—a sort of grown-up Bow Grouper—and he is a particularly lively writer. So the Sunday Times may well be expected to be rather less stuffy in its news and leader pages than it has been in the past. It is time we had some lively writing from the Right, and here is the brightest pros- pect since the demise of Truth.
There was a good fairy present (this isn't a true story) at the meeting of President Kennedy, Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Macmillan, and she offered to grant each of them one wish. Mr. Khrushchev asked for a bomb that would destroy the whole of the United States at one go. President Kennedy asked for a bomb that would similarly destroy the whole of the Soviet Union, hastily adding, 'Oh, and China.' Smiling invit- ingly, the good fairy then turned to the junior member of the party and said, 'And what would you like, Mr. Macmillan?' A whisky and soda,' said Mr. Macmillan, '. . . but pray serve the other gentlemen first.'
A reader has sent me a page of the Welsh edition of the Liverpool Daily Post, the whole of which is devoted to the trial of a Dutch seaman at Chester Assizes for the murder of a Welsh servant girl. A whole page would seem excessive in any case (the News of the World thought less than half a page quite enough), but all the more so when the words `Rape,' Lust,"Lying Naked on the Bed,' and 'Frenzied Intercourse' are all elevated into headlines and crossheads—`fren- zied intercourse' indeed, being repeated no fewer than four times in the text. When I lived in those parts we used to think the Liverpool Daily Post a serious newspaper, but this looks like sensationalism for sensation's (or circula- tion's) sake. The same reader tells me that he notices, too, that when executions take place, the paper reprints details of the murder. This looks like a deliberate stirring up of the sort of irra- tional, emotional passion for more hanging.
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It was all Bordeaux wines, naturally, at the gala dinner given at Vintners' Hall on Monday by the four ancient, velvet-robed, wine-growing brotherhoods of Bordeaux to three ambassadors, members of the British wine trade, and other friends of the grape. There was a white Graves as an aperitif, and another with the fish, Yquem to wind up with, and a St. Emilion and a first- growth Medoc as the two red wines in between. These two looked ill-matched on the wine list, but the Château Cardinal Villemaurine 1955 with the fillet of beef was by no means put out of countenance by the much more famous Château Latour 1952 with the cheese. The Latour has still a long way to go but the Cardinal Ville- maurine was deliciously ready for drinking and if, to my mind, a little light for a St. Emilion, some of my knowledgeable neighbours said not, and it was certainly sturdy and flavoury enough for beef and a rich sauce. One of the beauties of St. Emilions of this class is that they are under- priced compared with the ItUdocs: inquiry on the morning after elicited that this same wine is to be had from Morgan Furze in Brick Street, Mayfair, for 16s. 6d. a bottle, château-bottled, and what's good enough for four Bordeaux brotherhoods and three ambassadors is good enough (in this case) for me.
CYRIL RAY
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