Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  The venerable Bookseller magazine has long been the organ of the book trade, but when we started there was another influential magazine, Smith’s Trade News, whose columnist, Eric Hiscock, seemed to have an inside track on the publishing world, and both his gossip and his tips were taken seriously. So when (perhaps prompted by Carmen Callil) he wrote that Chairman Alf ‘can’t fail to sell 40,000 copies’, we believed him. I’ve no idea how often his predictions were right, but I’m sorry to say that on this occasion they weren’t. It could and did fail to sell that number, though fortunately we’d been cautious in our print run, so we did well enough – enough to follow it up later with Johnny’s more substantial The Garnett Chronicles, Alf’s ‘autobiography’, produced over many hilarious, parrot-interrupted sessions.

  We had not planned to publish children’s books, but with Felix Gluck’s expertise to hand and an introduction (through Jenny Secombe) to the extraordinary Michael Bentine, we were tempted to dip our toes into those rather specialised waters. Michael had been one of the original Goons, writing the first programmes with Spike Milligan and appearing in them, but he’d pulled out after the first thirty-eight shows for reasons that have always been a little blurred, none of the Goons ever wanting to be drawn about it. A creative clash with Milligan is generally held to have been the cause, as they both had extraordinary imaginations and distinctive personalities. With Bentine, such were his gifts of invention, you never knew what was real and what was fantasy. Harry Secombe once told me of an occasion in their early days when they were appearing together in variety somewhere in the provinces, and a woman was knocked down by a car just as they were about to cross the road. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bentine had rushed forward, kept the crowd at bay, issued directions to the police as they arrived, and attended to the woman until the ambulance appeared. Harry had looked on in amazement as Bentine transformed himself into Dr Kildare, believing utterly in himself and convincing everyone around him that he was a doctor. On another occasion, Peter Sellers, doubting Bentine’s claims that he was a champion fencer, had set him up with a German who really was a champion and arranged for them to have a friendly duel. Once again Bentine hadn’t hesitated, had displayed great skill – and ended up the winner. He was also said to be a crack shot but Peter, wisely, didn’t put him to the test. Michael called himself a Peruvian Briton but was actually born in Watford and went to Eton, though he did receive the Order of Merit of Peru for his work in raising money after the Peruvian earthquake of 1970. He worked for RAF Intelligence during the war and for MI9 under Airey Neave, and took part in the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp, about which he wrote most movingly. In the showbiz world he’d won a BAFTA for his off-the-wall TV series It’s a Square World, just one of his many surreal and highly influential TV shows.

  The astonishing Michael was a delight, as we discovered when we went to his home in Esher to discuss a series of books based on his popular children’s television series Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, for which he designed the Potty puppets, wrote the scripts and did all the voices (as he had for his earlier series, The Bumblies). But while his ideas flowed like lava as we settled down to lunch in his kitchen, prepared on tiptoe by his enchanting wife Clementina, a former ballet dancer, getting Michael to write to a deadline was another matter, not to mention the illustrations he promised to accompany the text. Liz and Felix, in tune with him from the word go, did their best, Liz even gallantly flying to Guernsey where Michael was in summer season to draw the words out of him. And eventually the first two books appeared: Michael Bentine’s Potty Treasure Island, and Michael Bentine’s Potty Khyber Pass – complete with potty Bentine pictures.

  * * *

  An early disappointment was Rosemary Clooney, whose life story we’d taken on. Famous as the blonde who sang ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ with Bing Crosby in the perennial film, Clooney was a fabulous jazz singer, and her tumultuous life was unsparingly chronicled in her book (which was later made into a film). But to make a success of it we needed her support, and when she was in London to star in a live BBC concert at the Royal Festival Hall, we had dinner with her afterwards at a restaurant in Kensington. She was charm itself, agreeing that if we could arrange bookings for her, she would come back for a book tour. Meanwhile, a young man joined us at the table. ‘This is Bing’s son,’ she said casually. Hollywood royalty indeed! I was impressed, and even more so to find, when I went to pay the bill, that she’d already settled it.

  A tour was duly arranged – a week at Ronnie Scott’s, a week in the north, linked to TV, radio and several nightclub bookings. Carole and I went on holiday, returning the weekend before she was due to find a note through our door which said simply, ‘Rosemary Clooney cancelled’ – on medical advice, we were later told, but we couldn’t help wondering. It was a salutary introduction to the vagaries of the showbiz world, and the fact that George Clooney is her nephew doesn’t really redeem it.

  Still, our own show had to go on and a story in the Evening Standard caught my eye about the actor Robert Morley having just been voted wittiest writer of the year. Morley was a household name in those days, both as an actor and as a raconteur, and was a much sought-after guest on the chat shows of the day. Larger than life in every way, he was the archetypal Englishman in many of the films and plays he appeared in (and indeed in real life), dominating every scene and often improvising as he went along, which must have been alarming for the rest of the cast. Later, he became the unmistakable face of Britain on the ubiquitous British Airways adverts of the time. I had always enjoyed reading and watching him, so wrote to congratulate him on the award and to propose a collection of his entertaining magazine pieces. These were on various subjects – the theatre, food, travel etc. – many of them autobiographical. Almost immediately I was contacted by his son, the theatre critic Sheridan Morley, and we met for lunch. The Morleys were a theatrical family, Robert’s mother-in-law being Dame Gladys Cooper, one of the great actresses of her day, while an aunt of Sheridan’s had married Robert Hardy, and Joanna Lumley was a cousin. Sheridan had actually been named after the character his father was playing in a long-running production of The Man Who Came to Dinner at the Savoy Theatre.

  Sheridan was very much in favour of our proposal, introduced us to Robert, and a series of highly successful books followed: A Musing Morley, Morley Matters and More Morley. I remember Liz recounting how, when she’d dropped off some proofs one Sunday lunchtime at Robert’s house in Wargrave, she’d felt as if she’d walked onto a stage set, the entire family declaiming in all directions as they assembled for lunch – apart, that is, from Robert’s rather quietly refined wife Joan, who must have been reduced to silence long before. As I was to discover once I got to know Robert (and as I should have divined from his girth), food was of great importance to him and the Morley family. Indeed, at one point Robert had placed the following advert in The Times: ‘Father with horrible memories of his own school days at Wellington is searching for a school for his own son where the food matters as much as the education and the standards are those of a good three-star seaside hotel.’ Despite that, Sheridan still managed to get to Merton College, Oxford, and was a highly respected, much-in-demand critic, author and broadcaster, presenting the popular BBC2 programmes Late Night Line-Up with Joan Bakewell, Film Night, and also the Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope.

  Given his high profile and his wit as a speaker, Robert was the perfect author. In some ways he was a kind of English version of the cosmopolitan, multilingual Peter Ustinov, and in fact Carole and I were once enjoying tea at the Morley home when Ustinov and his wife made an entrance. Together with the other guests, we sat around in a circle not quite believing our eyes or ears as he and Robert held court – Ustinov perhaps the most famous raconteur in the world, and Robert, on home ground, sardonically holding his own. Sitting there, I knew how Liz had felt that Sunday lunchtime: it was as if we were in the middle of a show and whenever there was a pause in the conversation we felt w
e should clap. Robert was very much aware of his own image – he was, in truth, his own greatest creation – and he was never above laughing at himself, as in the story he told in one of his books about meeting Rex Harrison in the Burlington Arcade. After congratulating Robert on his appearance as the subject of This Is Your Life, the flamboyant, six-times-married Harrison continued, ‘You’ve been so sensible; one house, one wife and, if you’ll forgive me saying so, one performance.’

  Sheridan was also a great talker, and a walking encyclopaedia of all things theatrical. At the time of our meeting he was Punch magazine’s theatre critic, and he made a suggestion over lunch that changed everything for us, professionally and personally: ‘You should do a book of Al’s Idi Amin pieces.’ ‘Al’ was Alan Coren, then deputy editor of Punch, and Sheridan was referring to the spoof column Alan wrote each week in the voice and persona of the notorious Ugandan dictator. Amin’s many crazy outpourings had made him seem like a buffoon, whereas in reality he was a psychotic monster of the highest order, repressing his people with unimaginable cruelty and murdering opponents at will. It would be impossible to get away with that column today, despite its obvious satirical intent, but somehow Coren made it hilarious despite its gruesome undertones. What a field day he’d have had with Donald Trump!

  Years later, Sheridan was the man who came to dinner, to us, turning up early and alone, having been reviewing a matinee in town (or so he told us), his wife, Margaret, arriving a little later. We’d also invited the Abses as well as Maureen Lipman and Jack Rosenthal, and it was a dinner party that neither we nor they would ever forget. It was as if we were on the stage set of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Sheridan and Margaret publicly engaged in a private battle to see who could talk loudest and longest, the pitch becoming more and more strident and the volume increasing with every course. No one, not even the witty Maureen, could get a word in. One story I recall Sheridan telling (in the calmer early part of that evening) was about Marlene Dietrich, and how she would invite people round to listen to recordings of her applause. It takes all kinds…

  Not long afterwards, the loquacious Sheridan had a complete breakdown and was virtually unable to speak for quite some time. Benny Green stood in for him on his various radio programmes, telling me later that he never knew there were so many arts programmes, as he raced from studio to studio.

  I’d met Alan Coren several times socially, but we’d never had a real conversation, and when I put Sheridan’s Idi Amin idea to him he was hesitant, but suggested lunch. Alan was dazzling, both as a writer and as a conversationalist, and widely considered to be top of the pack where humorous writers were concerned. Clive James, himself no mean wordsmith, wrote of Alan, ‘He has a comic imagination which actually renders your jaded scribe flabbergasted,’ while The Times simply called him ‘a comic genius’. Our lunch went well, and we ended up publishing not only two volumes of The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin but also some twenty-six volumes of humour and ten children’s novels (written for his children, Giles and Victoria). Alan remained fiercely loyal over the years as his fame grew both on the page and on air. He became a team captain on the popular TV programme Call My Bluff (opposite Sandi Toksvig), and star of Radio 4’s News Quiz, where his imaginative wit found a wide and appreciative audience.

  I suppose you could say the Idi Amin books were a risk, and nobody was more amazed than Alan when he picked up a copy of the Sunday Times while on holiday in France and found himself high on the bestseller list. Altogether the two volumes sold over half a million copies, and John Bird recorded them on disc. It was a great way to start an author–publisher relationship and a friendship that lasted up to Alan’s death in 2007.

  As the books started to roll out and the list of authors grew, Michael Rivkin took a proud but hands-off interest. He’d taken us – Liz and her husband Brian, the Secombes, Carole and me – to a celebration dinner in Soho when Twice Brightly came out (Esther Rantzen, then a young reporter covering the general election, was also there, brought by a friend of Michael’s), and from time to time he’d invite us to dinner parties at his flat. At one of these I found myself sitting next to Gemma Levine. Gemma, then married to the lawyer Eric Levine, was starting to make her way as a photographer, and as it turned out a fine and imaginative one who would go on to publish a number of successful books of her own, including one with Henry Moore. As it was early days for both of us, I invited her to photograph some of our authors and to cover some of our launches, which she did brilliantly. While Gemma built up her portfolio, she provided us with arresting author photos, quite a few of which ended up as covers. I think especially of a series of books with Frank Muir.

  On the first anniversary of Robson Books, Michael, always generous and hospitable, suggested that we invite some authors to lunch and a swim one Sunday at his magnificent country home near Basingstoke. The Corens, the Abses and the Bentines all came. A traditionalist, Rivkin liked to pass the port after a meal while the ladies tactfully withdrew (imagine!), but when it came to that moment (one I was dreading), dear unworldly Dannie, utterly oblivious, got up and left the room with Michael’s wife and the other ladies, and the rest of the men were quick to follow suit. Having put paid to Michael’s plans, we all went to relax around the pool. It began to cloud over, and Michael Bentine, ever mystically inclined and never deterred, announced that he could disperse the clouds. He set to, staring intently up for a few dramatic minutes before declaring that there was no point going on as we could all see they were breaking up. We gazed up and the clouds gazed down, as threatening as ever, so we filled our glasses, toasted Bentine – still talking animatedly – and dived into the pool before rain could stop play.

  * * *

  Our Poland Street offices, located just around the corner from the BBC, were convenient to drop into, and one welcome early visitor was the publisher Anthony Cheetham, who had just launched Futura Paperbacks from his rather larger premises further down the same street. We sipped coffee together in our office, he buying the paperback rights to several of our early titles and we agreeing to hardback some of his paperbacks. Anthony has always operated on the large scale, and very successfully, whereas we always remained relatively small. He may even have launched more publishing imprints than I have!

  John Simpson, now famous as the BBC’s world affairs editor, but then fairly recently down from Cambridge, where he’d shared a room with my cousin Nicholas Snowman, was another early Poland Street visitor. We’d given a poetry and jazz concert in Cambridge which John may have come to with Nicholas, but I don’t believe I’d met him then. John was writing a political thriller and wanted to know if we would be interested. We were, very, and eventually published two: Moscow Requiem and A Fine and Private Place, as well as several timely nonfiction books, which got a lot of attention. John has always struck me as Mr Cool, though the situations in which he has found himself over the years have been far from cool. In the early days, when we were publishing him, I remember watching him reporting on the BBC News from Paris one evening amidst smoke and tear gas as the police fought to gain control of what were extremely violent student riots. I was due to meet him early the next morning on Paddington Station to escort him to the calmer waters of a literary lunch in Harrogate, but didn’t imagine for a moment he would be there. But there he was, bang on time, ambling towards me, not a hair out of place, and shrugging off my surprise and concern for his well-being as if he’d just come back from reporting on a cricket match. Has he always been like that, I wonder, when facing bombs and rockets in far more dangerous parts of the world? That, at any rate, is how he has always seemed to me, reporting with his usual knowledge, insight and great sangfroid from one hot spot or another.

  John Simpson, one of our most distinguished early authors.

  It was also through Nicholas Snowman that I came to meet and publish the great pianist Alfred Brendel. Nicholas was at the centre of the music world. At Cambridge, together with conductor David Atherton, the youngest ever to conduct at
Covent Garden, he’d founded the London Sinfonietta, a highly esteemed chamber orchestra dedicated to championing contemporary music. Nicholas went on to work with Pierre Boulez at the Centre Pompidou in Paris before becoming chief executive of the Southbank Centre, then general manager of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and later director of the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg. Additionally, he is undoubtedly the only member of my family to have been awarded the Légion d’Honneur.

  My cousin Nicholas Snowman, who was instrumental in developing our early music list, and his wife, Margo.

  Given my own strong interest in most kinds of music, it wasn’t long before I was itching to start a music list, and Nicholas, with his knowledge and wide contacts, was just the person to advise us – on the classical side, at least. As he was still working with Boulez, I asked him whether he might be able to effect an introduction: to have a book by this ground-breaking composer/conductor on our list would be a coup indeed. Nicholas gladly agreed to float the idea to him, and when Boulez next came to London to conduct a Festival Hall concert he agreed to join us for dinner afterwards. At the last minute, he asked via Nicholas whether we would extend the invitation to Alfred Brendel, who was attending the concert as his guest. Naturally we were thrilled to do so – Carole and I had been to the series of enthralling masterclasses he had recently given. Sad to relate, we never managed to tie Boulez down to a book. However, something momentous did result from that RFH dinner: as everyone was leaving, I plucked up courage and asked Alfred Brendel if he would be interested in writing a book based on his masterclasses. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it, but, courteous as ever, he thanked me for the suggestion and agreed to come to our office to discuss it.