21 JANUARY 1978, page 23

Innocent

Simon Blow Edgar Allan Poe David Sinclair (Dent £6.95) Few men cantave been as badly served by their biographers as Edgar Allan Poe. Lytton Strachey's admonition that the......

In Public

Peter Ackroyd In the National Interest Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel (Bodley Head £4.50) If politicians didn't exist, thriller-writers would have to invent them; come to think of......