Eden experts
Sir: Hard on the heels of a most heart- warming Yuletide message from your liter- ary editor (an exceptional event since, per- haps because he is a first-class card player, he is notoriously constipated about any such demonstrative gestures) thanking me for my 'excellent, interesting, funny review' of the latest Eden biography (Books, 14/21 December), there arrived the later issue of The Spectator containing the very unjolly tail-end letter (4 January) from the retired civil servant and ambassador, Sir Guy Mil- lard, writing, if I am not mistaken, from a former residence of the lost leader to whom he has remained, in death as in life, so touchingly loyal: A little unwise surely, though, of him to claim that he was writing to you 'for the record' since he himself earned his very brief place in history, and therefore a passing mention in David Dut- ton's excellent book, by hiding from his official report the proven collusion by Eden over Suez with the Israelis and French which poor Anthony made such desperate but unavailing attempts to conceal.
How could I 'seem' (like Hamlet 'I knew not seems') unaware of the family link between Eden and Fulke Warwick, the then chatelain of the castle in which he, at elec- tion and other times, stayed and where, seemingly unbeknown to Millard, he would walk and talk with me a deux? Of his cuck- olding his relative and host we did not speak.
I prefer my many happy memories of Mil- lard and his family going back well over half a century, especially of his genial, portly father (known and loved in Boodles, because of his resemblance to the then head of the Ismaili branch of Islam, as 'Aga' Millard). Alastair Forbes
1837 Château d'Oex, Vaud Switzerland
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