A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WITH the sudden death of Lord Lang of Lambeth a great figure passes from public life. Scholarship, eloquence, sincerity, breadth of mind—all these and many other qualities were embodied in this son of a Scottish Presbyterian who at Balliol seemed destined for the highest honours at the Bar and in the House, but went instead by way of Portsea, Stepney and York to Lambeth. In that long career certain milestones stand out, apart from the translations from see to see. One was Dr. Lang's chairmanship of the Lambeth Con- ference of 1930; another the crusade for the Revised Prayer Book in 1928; another the broadcast on the death of King George V; another a Sunday evening broadcast address on the abdication of King Edward VIII. The criticism which the abdication address provoked would have been just as strong, though it would have come from other quarters, if the leading figure in the Church of England had chosen to keep silent on a subject on which he deemed it right to be outspoken. An undergraduate at Balliol in Jowett's day, Lord Lang was a member of a notable society, which numbered among others, Curzon, Edward Grey and J. A. Spender. In college and university debates he took vigorous part as a Conservative, but it is of some interest to note that in the course of brief reminiscences contributed to a forthcoming life of Spender he observes "but I was really a Liberal." When I once sat next to him at a dinner at which the talk turned on literature he mentioned as his two favourite novels —not at all suggesting that they ought to be everyone's favourites- Middlemarch and The Heart of Midlothian.
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