In need of correction…

From a recent Guardian, as reported in the PLF blog. These children can’t be serious– I have see better reporting by high school students in rural New Mexico… 

A review of David Astor: A Life in Print,
a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of
errors (20 February, page 7, Review). In the article we suggested that
William Waldorf Astor was named after a hotel, when in fact his name
referred to the family’s native Rhineland village. He didn’t build
Cliveden, as we suggested, but bought it, and he didn’t sack the editor
of the Observer for spiking his contributions (although he did sack the
editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, another Astor acquisition, for spiking
his contributions). We said Katharine Whitehorn was women’s editor of
the Observer when in fact she was a columnist. We said Patrick Leigh
Fermor compared David Astor to Disney’s Pluto; Fermor actually compared
the writer Philip Toynbee to that cartoon character. Terence Kilmartin
replaced Jim Rose as Observer literary editor, not JC Trewin. During the
war, David Astor didn’t merely suffer “a mild attack of dysentery” as
suggested in the review. In fact he was wounded in action during a
German ambush in the Ardennes. Terence Kilmartin is believed to have
been involved in his rescue, and Astor was awarded the Croix de Guerre.