INFORMAL TALKS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31653, 13 April 1968, Page 4

INFORMAL TALKS

Conversations. By Kenneth Harris. Jonathan Cape. 285 pp.

Kenneth Harris is on the staff of the “Observer,” and many of these apparently off-the-cuff jottings of informal talks with celebrities have appeared in that journal. Three of them (with Lord Butler, Mr Cecil King and Mr Kosygin) were, however, conducted in a 8.8. C. studio. The twenty persons interviewed represented different spheres of interest—public service, the turf, the Church, sport, politics and a miscellany of others. Kenneth Harris is extraordinarily skilful at framing his questions in such a way that they give the reader an illuminating image of the person to whom he is talking.

Ted Dexter has some interesting observations to make on the British-Australian controversy over body-line bowling, and the estrangement it caused at the time in the cricket field between the two countries. Theodore Sorenson gives his views on President Kennedy, whose close confidant he was. The Burma campaign and also the workings of the Mulberry Harbour, which enabled the Allies to

land troops in France on D Day, are discussed with the author in a vivid and racy vernacular by Lord Mountbatten. Mr Kosygin in his 8.8. C. interview cleverly manages to say absolutely nothing about his country’s policies, while making friendly noises about his British hosts, during his visit to Britain. Mr Harold Wilson (in 1964) and Mr Edward Heath (in 1966) give their divergent views on politics as practised by the Mother of Parliaments. Lord Citrine (one of the oldest and most authoritative representatives of the trade union movement) demonstrates by his answer to Mr Harris’s careful questions that while the rank and file of Britain’s nine million trade unionists are interested only in their wage packets their leaders would seem to exert disproportionate power in a country of 56 million in trying to steer the ship of State on its way. Mr Cecil King, proprietor of the “Daily Mirror” (which has a five million circulation) strives, not too convincingly, to show that if the public wants a prepondrance of news stories about sex and violence, to the exclusion of other facets of life, it is right and proper for his paper to give it to them. The Duke of Edinburgh’s concern for saving England’s countryside from the advance of industrial projects reveals his capacity for hard work with no personal reward envisaged, and the sense of responsibility appertaining to those in high places. Other contributions come from “A Surgeon,” and “A Barrister:” and Sir John Hunt is lucid and explicit in explaining the mental and physical stresses inherent in mountain climbing at very high levels, This is an admirable bedside book—not demanding close concentration by the reader, but giving him considerable insight into the habits and customs of our civilisation.