Fleet Street Derby

In Lord Beaverbrook's mammoth Daily Express, the trial of handsome, lady-killing Neville Heath rambled through six extravagant columns. Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail had elbow room, too; its portrait of the gallows-bound Heath was in the best Fleet Street tradition (he looked and posed as a gentleman, but after all, his handkerchief stuck just a little too far out of his pocket, and his R.A.F. necktie was always "a trifle too aggressively knotted. . .").

In the tabloid Daily Mirror, "Cassandra" (William Connor), whose outspoken column almost got the paper suppressed for baiting the Churchill government four years ago, was back at his old stand. A rash of new bylines and comic strips broke out all over, and Londoners at long last could have more than a snifter of sports news.

After six years of newsprint famine, the British press were finally getting a bigger ration.* Supplies were now sufficient to allow standard-size, four-page papers to add six pages a week. And to let circulations find their "natural levels," the Government last week lifted ceilings. The press lords were free to print as many copies as they could sell--but free insurance and other come-ons were out.

Wishful Laborites expected that the Tory giants would lose ground in such a free market. They underestimated Britons' ravenous appetite for more news. In the first days of the new deal, all the big papers got bigger, no matter what their politics. Biggest ground-gainer: the Mirror, which serves its Socialism with sex on the side. Overnight it added 600,000 customers, passed 3,000,000 circulation. But the Tory Express, which has the biggest daily circulation in the world, picked up another third of a million, seemed likely to hold a safe lead with its dizzy 3,800,000. In the ruck: the Communist Daily Worker (circ. 106,000), which tripled its coverage of women's news, and lured only 3,000 new buyers.

* U.S. newspapers have been better off, but still have their troubles. Last Sunday's Philadelphia Record was printed on brown wrapping paper.

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