The genius of the Spectator’s Peter Robins

Some of the best journalists in Britain rarely, if ever, have their names in print. One of them is my colleague Peter Robins, the genius chief sub editor (or, technically, production editor) of The Spectator. In his Times column today (£), Matthew Parris has a story about Peter. Here it is:

‘If you sometimes feel you’re getting gobbledegook from this columnist you should realise how much worse gobbledegook you’d get were it not for that most self-effacing of species, the sub-editor. I blush to remember the errors from which this page’s subs have rescued me.

But I believe The Spectator’s Peter Robins touched new heights last week when, after I submitted a column quoting the Latin phrase from which we derive “Don’t speak ill of the dead”, he sent me this email:

“Hello, I’m a tiny bit worried about your Latin . . . You seem to be reading ‘dicendum est’ as third-person present indicative passive, ‘is said’ — but that would be ‘dictum est’, I think.