SOURCE: “OHMS,” in Spectator, Vol. 239, No. 7778, August 6, 1977, p. 31.

In the following favorable review of Water on the Brain, Green praises the relevance and topicality of Mackenzie's novel.

The republication of Water on the Brain could not have come at a more convenient moment. Only last month the British taxpayer learned with what acumen his money is being spent, in the following of Dr David Owen in mistake for Mr William Owen, and in the shadowing of Mrs Judith Hart in mistake for Mrs Tudor Hart; Sir Harold Wilson has now admitted: ‘I am not certain that for the last eight months when I was Prime Minister I knew what was happening, fully, in security.’ I have an idea that the richness of the comic diversion provided by all this bumbling more than compensates for the quantities of public money frittered away in providing it, but the challenge which...