MR. HUGH CUMIN', editorial director of the Mirror-Pictorial group—at present
busily engaged in swallowing the camel of Amalgamated Press —recently paid a brief visit to Russia. Like all such visitors, he has hastened into print with atl account of his trip. But Stop Press on Rusia (price 3d., and by the look of it even more heavilY subsidised than the Labour Party's poliey state ment) is a good deal better than most of Iheim Mr. Cudlipp is obviously an executive rather than a regular-writing journalist; some of his prose badly needs the blue pencil of a Mirror sub. to trim its lushness and knock out a few of the tired clichés ('Remy Martin is the equivalent of sperd- ing one rapturous evening with a delicate btJt decadent blonde. Georgian brandy is the enje ment of seven long nights with a sturdY brunette'). Still, it is easy to see how Mr. CucilipP has won the reputation of being one of the shrewdest brains in the British newspaper husi. ness (he could probably even tell us whett er the lambs on the Mirror's front page in spring- time are gambolling so happily because it iS springtime, or because they have just been booted firmly in the rear by a photographer's butty). Most visitors to Russia are impressed either ill spite or because of themselves; Mr. CudlipP seems never to have lost his head. When the toasts to peace grew too insistent, he worked references to Stalin's tyranny into his replies. When a trade-union leader said that workers in Britain were still struggling for their rights, Mr. Cudlipp laughed in his face. On the more political questions, Mr. Cudlipp is equally shrewd, offer- ing a valuable corrective (as, indeed, the Mirror usually does) to the floods of neo-Crankshavian Speculation to be found elsewhere. And a good thing too.
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