Many of the important and colorful stories that appear in TIME are the result of thoughtful planning for the future on the part of our correspondents--planning and researching carried on during short breathing spaces in their regular coverage of current news. In our London bureau, for example, this breathing space comes on Tuesday before most of the queries have arrived on the new week's stories. This is how TIME'S London news bureau was deployed last Tuesday, Nov. 30, on both current and future stories:

Sir Winston Churchill's 80th birthday celebration and the critical storm over Graham Sutherland's Churchill portrait were obviously stories to be reported. Honor Balfour, TIME'S parliamentary specialist, got the assignment. Reporters drew lots for passes to the ceremony in crowded Westminster Hall, and Correspondent Balfour was lucky enough to get one. Nearly everyone got a glimpse of the Sutherland portrait in the hall, but few had a close view. Reporter Balfour previously had arranged for a private viewing through the good offices of her friend Mrs. Sutherland, the artist's wife. All of which contributed to this week's stories (see FOREIGN NEWS and ART).

Another of our London correspondents, Joan Bruce, spent Tuesday working on two music stories. One was on Sir William Walton's first opera. Troilus and Cressida (see Music). She was digging up background on the composer and his music so that the writer in New York would have this information before the premiere in Covent Garden. This done, she got ready to go to Leicestershire to track down a lead on a story that looked like a good bet for TIME'S Music section in the future.

In the meantime, Correspondent Lester Bernstein was writing and organizing some four weeks of intensive research in a special field of medicine as the basis for a possible future cover story for the Medicine section. Elsewhere in London George Voigt, having checked his usual beat, which is Defense and Foreign Office, was checking up on a show at the British Broadcasting Corp., with an eye cocked toward a future television story.

Robert Lubar was collecting facts on Britain's aircraft industry and also trying to determine to what extent the failure of Britain's ill-fated jet Comet (TIME, Nov. 1) had damaged the industry. Joe David Brown was driving back from a chilly week's traveling in Scotland, where he had been looking into Scotland's spectacular industrial and business expansion.

Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre was in touch with our stringer correspondent in Norway, who was, in turn, establishing contact with a Norwegian whaling fleet for a future Medicine story. Across Laguerre's desk came other messages from Finland, where our stringer correspondent had been instructed to watch visiting Soviet Minister Anastas Mikoyan, a likely news figure in the near future. Incoming research from Sweden was transmitted to New York for this week's cover story on Ernest Hemingway (see BOOKS).

Laguerre lunched with a famous British ex-Communist, then he was off to an interview with a Foreign Office official. Back at the office, incoming stories and suggestions from TIME stringers in Ireland, Scandinavia and the main British cities were edited and evaluated for the overnight story suggestion list to the editors in New York.'

This sample of a planning day in the operations of the London staff is duplicated in all our bureaus; we believe that it is time very well spent. For we have found that the more our correspondents and editors learn about people before they become news, the better able are we to report the news with the critical judgment that you demand of TIME at deadline time each week.

Cordially yours,

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