6 DECEMBER 1986, Page 30

Sir: What on earth has got into Frank Johnson? He

used to be quite funny in the Daily Telegraph.

What Lord Denning actually said, a propos Robert Maxwell, was "E's another German'. I changed it to 'foreigner' in my account so as not to draw attention to the old boy's slightly shaky geography. He wasn't being anti-Semitic — unless by German he meant Jew. I imagined he thought of Maxwell and Goldsmith, quite rightly, as humourless bullies of a typically Prussian variety.

Richard Ingrams

Forge House, Aldworth, Reading, Berkshire