Orthodoxy Rewarded
If sterling is stronger this week it must surely be something to do with the knighthood awarded to the Bank of England's Maurice Parsons, that formidable pillar of financial orthodoxy and rectitude. With his great height, resonant voice and profound pessimism, Parsons sometimes gives the impression of a court undertaker, though in fact his concern is to avert the funeral (of the exchange rate) rather than officiate at it. Expertise and force of personality have combined
to make him the most important single figure in British economic policy during the 'sixties. This has almost certainly turned out to be a bad thing. But as Samuel Brittan remarks in The Treasury under the Tories, 'It is not his [Parsons] fault that there is no one on the radical side a fraction as impressive.'
A salute, too, to Graham Greene (Literary Editor of the Spectator in 1940-41), who becomes the second member of this paper's staff to notch up a CH. (The first was John Buchan.) We mark the event with a characteristically felicitous new short story.
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