Media: Talk of the Trade - Between the lines

WHEN Fleet Street's real power brokers write for the public prints it is worth looking for the hidden agenda. Sir David English, chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, wrote a cutting review of Paper Dreams, Stephen Glover's account of his years at the Independent, in Monday's Guardian. Describing the work as 'a luke- warm stew of soft-boiled score settling', he mused: 'One wonders why such books are written, let alone published' and concluded: 'I suspect that soon he will regret having written it, but it won't matter since most people will have forgotten about it by then.' And the hidden agenda? Mr Glover is now an associate editor of Associated Newspapers' London Evening Standard, which means that Sir David, though too coy to say so, is his boss.