Editing Michael Foot (section)

=== "Foot Heads Arms Body" ===
On 22 June 1978, ''[[The Guardian]]'' ran an article with the headline "Foot hits back on Nazi comparison".<ref>{{cite news |title=Foot hits back on Nazi comparison |work=The Guardian |date=22 June 1978}}</ref> Reader David C. Allan of [[Edinburgh]] responded with a letter to the editor, which the paper ran on 27 June. Decrying the headline's apparent pun, Allan suggested that, if Foot were in future to be appointed [[Secretary of State for Defence]], ''The Guardian'' might cover it under the headline "Foot Heads Arms Body".<ref>{{cite news |title=Footnote [letter to the editor] |first=David C. |last=Allan |journal=[[The Guardian]] |date=1978-06-27 |page=10 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39001580/foot_heads_arms_body/}}</ref> 

The belief later gained currency that ''[[The Times]]'' actually had run the headline. Some decades later, Martyn Cornell recalled the story as true, saying he had written the headline himself as a ''Times'' subeditor around 1986.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/05/footnotes-life-michael-foot|title=Footnotes to a life well lived|last=Hoggart|first=Simon|author-link=Simon Hoggart|date=5 March 2010|work=[[The Guardian]]|location=London|access-date=2 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005004144/http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/05/footnotes-life-michael-foot|archive-date=5 October 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> The headline does not, however, appear in [[The Times Digital Archive]], which includes every day's newspaper from 1785 into the 21st century.<ref name="timesarchive">{{cite web|url=http://gale.cengage.co.uk/times.aspx/ |title=The Times Digital Archive |publisher=Cengage Learning |date=2011 |access-date=28 May 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160430065942/http://gale.cengage.co.uk/times.aspx/ |archive-date=30 April 2016 }}</ref> 

In 2018, [[John Rentoul]] included this headline in his "The Top 10: Headlines", subtitled "Clever and memorable plays on words that have made journalistic history".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Rentoul |first1=John |author-link1=John Rentoul |title=Top 10 headlines |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-top-10-headlines-a7791871.html |access-date=22 March 2024 |work=The Independent |date=10 December 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240216072132/https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-top-10-headlines-a7791871.html |archive-date=16 February 2024 |language=en}}</ref>