Where would the popes, presidents and princesses of the world be without Paul Johnson, the former editor of the New Statesman, and much loved columnist in this and other periodicals? As his latest book shows, he is an all but indispensable asset, a social equivalent of the Admirable Crichton.
Take Kenneth Kaunda, for example, President of what was Northern Rhodesia. Paul writes: ‘I came across [him] at Salisbury Airport, where he was in difficulties with the authorities. I managed to extricate him and we flew to Lusaka together’. Phew! Stephen Spender was distressed by some remarks made about him in an American publication:
I wrote a piece in The Spectator, expressing the book’s faults, and as a result the plan for an English edition was dropped. Stephen was always profoundly grateful.
Nikita Khrushchev had pretty similar feelings when Paul printed his letter in the New Statesman. Indeed, ‘it did the paper’s prestige a lot of good and helped to start CND’.
Not that everyone involved in CND matched Paul’s own high personal qualities.
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