THE LAW OF DELAY

by C. Northcote Parkinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 1970

Fourteen ""Interviews and Outerviews"" in which Mr. Parkinson formulates the new law (delay is the ""deadliest form of denial"") but also reviews his prophetic older one finding that while Britain has cut its fleet from 308 to 114 in thirty years, its Admiralty officials and staff have zoomed from 11,270 to 33,574, ""barely sufficient to administer the navy we no longer possess."" Mr. Parkinson awards ""The Parkinson Prize"" to the Netherlands for their efficiency, sharpened by the constant of danger, after reviewing some marginal figures on crime and mental good health (as you know he can really plot curves and kid the pants off a postulate with a statistic). Several of these return him to his ideological home country with discussions of the stratifications of class and power and authority and costive monopolies, etc. Sometimes he is just Potter-ing around in the pieces on passing the ""Buckmastership"" and ""The Abominable No-Man."" Always there are the charming if captious assumptions and reductions (the beard is a facial characteristic of our ""periods of decline and uncertainty""), the epigrams and equivocations (cf. the piece on youth) and of course the happy turn of phrase which, in terms of that assured readership, will controvert the title.

Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION