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saying that they had made her a liar and she could prove anything that she had said. There has never been a case like this in literary history. She sued the London Times for quite a big sum, and the London Times lost the case and had to pay her because she could prove everything she had said and they had said that she was a liar. It was a very interesting case.

Well, the book came to us, and I read it. We all read it. We screamed with laughter at it. At the last minute I got scared because I said, “Here we are across the avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral. What is Cardinal Spellman, what are they all going to say about this book? They are going to be outraged. I don't think we ought to do it.” I remember Donald saying, “All right. If that's the way you feel, we won't do it. But don't you ever tell me again that you're a liberal publisher.” Well, that was a stab right below the belt. So we did it.

By this time, as I have said, Spellman had learned his lesson, however, and we never heard one word from him. The book was a great success. It's still in Vintage Books, and I still think it's a gloriously funny book. Honor Tracy has written several books since. None of them have been as successful as that one although one of them was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

But that was the Cardinal Spellman story.

You say that he was reactionary. Could you go into that at all?