" LOAD HALIFAX IN 250,000 WORDS " Sta,—In The Spectator
of October 31st the reviewer of my biography of Lord Halifax complains of the book's accuracy, length—indeed its actual existence—under the sweeping heading " Lord Halifax in 250,000 words." No doubt the book has more than the usual quota of textual errors, and I would plead, in this instance, that I had to try to proof-read my manuscript while on active service, but your reviewer would have enhanced his claims to be an historical and factual purist if he had taken the trouble to find out the real length of my book. As it is he has only added a mere 9o,000 words to it!
But is it sufficient to describe an author's political judgements as " wild" on the evidence of a handpicked list of " laudatory adjec- tives "? or to describe his discussion of the Abdication crisis as " a particularly unfortunate combination of speculation and innuendo" without attempting to answer or indeed mention the straight question he asked as to whether Mr. Baldwin's final statement to Parliament presented all the facts? 'What sort of a critical method is it that seeks to score a point by blaming me for writing a longer book about Lord Halifax than Professor Trevelyan saw fit to write about Lord Grey ; what technique, that pulls a sentence about Irwin's hunting propensities out of its context and looks in vain for its meaning? On the whole I was not particularly surprised to find your reviewer referring sympathetically to the reader "left flounder- ing in a welter of detail with background indistinguishable from
foreground."—Yours faithfully, ALAN CAMPBELL JOHNSON. Greenacre, Parkwood Road, Hastings, Sussex.
[Our reviewer writes: The volume contains 570 pages of 42 lines, averaging about rol words to the line, total 251,370 ; but let us say 240,000 if it will make for amity. My comment on the author's political judgements had nothing to do with my comment on his adjectives. They were (quite obviously, I think) separate comments.]
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