18 SEPTEMBER 1959, Page 8

Who was this scurrilous scribbler who so per- sonally, and

with such appalling taste, scourged the heroes of the history books? At the time he wrote these outrageous columns, he was a journal- ist and novelist in his early thirties, who had just been described by some of his contemporaries as 'a damned bumptious Jew boy,' but who was later praised by Mr. Harold Macmillan as 'the greatest of our Conservative statesmen.' His name was Benjamin Disraeli, and he invented Taper—in perhaps more ways than one. I wonder how many subscriptions to The Times were cancelled during 1836?

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