HERBERT, Sir A(lan) P(atrick)

(1890-1971)

   UK humorist, writer and politician, prolific for 60 years after he began publishing light verse in Punch, some of it fantastic, around 1910. The Red Pen (1927 chap), the libretto for a radio opera with music (not included) by Geoffrey Toye (1889-1942), is a NEAR FUTURE story in which artists arrange for the nationalization of the arts. Number Nine, or The Mind-Sweepers (1951) and its loose sequel, Made for Man (1958), also set in the near future, are political SATIRES, good-tempered except on the matter of divorce, in which area APH's liberal instincts caused him to disagree profoundly with Church of England doctrines. A late example of his long-extended Misleading Cases sequence, "Reign of Error?" in Bardot M.P.? (coll 1964), addresses the legal question of the criminalresponsibility of a COMPUTER.

   JC