Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  Over the years we published several books with Uri. By now, he had come to live in England and had bought a nine-bedroom, Palladian-style mansion in Sonning. He continued to be the ultimate showman, never more so than when he and his wife decided to go through the religious wedding ceremony they’d never had. Conveniently, this coincided with a book we were publishing by Uri and the prominent American rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who’d served for eleven years as rabbi at Oxford University and been voted The Times Preacher of the Year. He and Uri had corresponded over the years and their book, Confessions of a Rabbi and a Psychic, drew on their letters. Who, then, better than Shmuley to conduct the ceremony under a chupah on the extensive Geller lawn… and who better to be the witness than Michael Jackson, a friend of them both? The only trouble was that the witness was very, very late, but eventually a helicopter appeared, hovered above us and finally landed on the lawn, and out stepped an apparently shy Michael Jackson. The rabbi broke off from talking about his and Uri’s book to the assembled guests, and the ceremony took place. A few days later, Jackson appeared again – at a small-scale event for our book being hosted by a Jewish cultural organisation at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place, which was to feature a serious discussion between the two authors. But as word spread that Jackson was coming, huge crowds gathered outside and the organisers nearly had a fit, as did the police, who had not been alerted. Fortunately, Jackson, who’d come in good faith to support his two friends, didn’t stay long, smiling for the cameras, shaking a few hands and disappearing into the limousine that had brought him, leaving Uri and Shmuley to smooth feathers and get on with the main event. It was one of our most bizarre launches, and I wasn’t readily forgiven by the philanthropic people who’d arranged it. For all the publicity Jackson’s appearances had generated, the book was only a modest success, though I did manage to sell the American rights at Frankfurt to Hillel Black, then working for Sourcebooks, a remarkable company founded and run by the dynamic Dominique Raccah. However, when the whole Michael Jackson scandal blew up and Geller and Boteach at first supported him publicly, it did not help the book in the US, and Dom was understandably displeased with the situation. Happily, it didn’t prevent us from continuing to have our regular dinners together in Frankfurt and London.

  Michael Jackson gatecrashes the launch of Uri Geller and Shmuley Boteach’s book Confessions of a Rabbi and a Psychic.

  I must have been much more adventurous in my early Frankfurt days, as I think back to the year we travelled to the fair via Cologne to talk to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom I was trying to sign up for our evolving music list. We spent an uneasy night there in a kind of annexe attached to the large main building, surrounded by trees, where he lived and worked. The following morning, he showed us around his studio, pointing out the various electronic devices he used in his compositions while I did my best to understand and conceal my ignorance of the works he talked about so animatedly. The book we ended up publishing with him was a collection of conversations between the composer and Jonathan Cott, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine.

  You don’t expect to meet poets at Frankfurt, but it was there, in 1994, that I met the celebrated Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who’d written an epic novel of modern Russia, Don’t Die Before You’re Dead. The book came with strong endorsements from Mikhail Gorbachev, Arthur Miller and William Styron, and I was discussing it with the Canadian publisher Anna Porter, whose company, Key Porter Books, controlled the UK rights, when Yevtushenko himself appeared on her stand. I knew his brave and powerful poem ‘Babi Yar’, recalling the massacre of over 30,000 Jews in a ravine just outside Kiev, and though we published little fiction, meeting him sealed my fate, and I bought the UK rights – making it a condition that he came to England to promote the book, which he willingly did. Among various other events, we arranged for him to read at the Cheltenham Festival, to which I drove him (in those days, I seemed always to be chauffeuring authors to one event or another). Yevtushenko was a dramatic and demonstrative reader of his own poetry and used to reading to large crowds at home in Russia, where audiences for poetry readings could number in thousands. There weren’t thousands in Cheltenham, but there were several hundred, and the hall was full. He read mainly in English, but occasionally in Russian too, to give the real flavour of his poems, and then answered questions. The audience, used to more sedate British poets, was riveted. As it happened, Laurie Lee, with his quiet Gloucestershire burr, had preceded him, and Yevtushenko, who came in to listen for a few minutes, told me I should advise my ‘friend’ to project more, completely missing Laurie’s captivating style and charm (though he couldn’t help noticing the long queue for Laurie’s books after his reading).

  The Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who saved my life… and his.

  My new Russian friend liked to enjoy himself, and while I was ready to drive back to London after his reading, he was more interested in attending a party that was being given in a large manor house on the outskirts of Cheltenham, where he was the life and soul, enjoying the drink and the company of the good-looking young women who circled around him, and insisting on staying till the bitter end. It wasn’t until about two in the morning that I managed to drag him away. I was quite exhausted, even if he was still firing on all cylinders. We discussed poetry for a while as I drove, and then, as we went through a tunnel, I must have dozed off, for I suddenly heard him screaming my name, which brought me round with a start just as we were swerving towards the tunnel wall. I managed to straighten up in the nick of time – but for him, it would have been a catastrophe, and certainly not the kind of publicity we needed for his book. Yevtushenko had saved both our lives. He later signed my copy of his book ‘Yevgeny Yevtushenko, your protective angel’.

  Cheltenham is a fabulous festival and I was to return there several times with authors, notably with the French actress Leslie Caron. The gamine star of such classics as An American In Paris, Gigi, Daddy Long Legs and Lili, Leslie was sophistication itself. A former prima ballerina with Roland Petit’s ballet company in Paris, she was at one time married to Peter Hall, had a love affair with Warren Beatty, and can claim to be the only woman to have danced with Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. She had also won a BAFTA for her starring role in The L-Shaped Room. Not surprisingly, she packed them in at Cheltenham, as she had the week before at the very classy Blenheim Festival, beneath the chandeliers of the palace’s enormous dining room, and again at the National Film Theatre. Though Leslie’s English is perfect, she remains a true Frenchwoman, as became clear to me when I visited her in Paris to sift through the hundreds of photos she had laid out on the floor of her apartment. I’d only been there a few minutes when she declared, ‘I’m hungry. I can’t work unless we eat,’ and so we left the photos and wandered over to the bistro opposite her flat to recharge her batteries with steak frites… and then we went back to work.

  * * *

  One of my strangest book fair encounters was in 2001. I had noticed a smartly dressed man who looked as though he came from the Middle East standing opposite our stand, observing me closely. When he saw I was free, he came up and introduced himself as a representative of Mrs Mubarak, wife of the then President of Egypt, explaining that she was writing her life story and that we had been recommended as a possible publisher. He had with him a letter of authority on official government notepaper. In response to his courteous questioning, I told him about our small company, and even that my wife had been born in Egypt, not really believing this was for real. I gave him some catalogues and several books he wanted to look at, we shook hands warmly and he went on his way. Shortly after, he returned to ask if I would be prepared to fly to Cairo to meet Mrs Mubarak. I told him that in principle I’d be pleased to, indicating that I would want to bring my wife, and wondering what on earth Carole would make of it. After all, she hadn’t been back to Egypt since leaving as a young girl in 1956. Quite why, given that we were Jewish and had published books o
n Israel, he had come to us, I couldn’t imagine, and thought no more about it. There were, after all, a great many larger publishers at the fair much better equipped than us to handle a book with the international potential this seemed to have.

  However, a month or so later I received an email from this same man which, among other things, said:

  I briefed Mrs Mubarak about all the meetings I had at the fair and made it clear that you at Robson Books are highly recommended as the publisher for such a prestigious book. The reason I believe so, is your strong personal feeling about it, and also being familiar with the Egyptian culture is very important…

  He explained that Mrs Mubarak was currently travelling in the US but that ‘as soon as I hear a positive response we will arrange a meeting… I hope our next meeting will be in Cairo.’ Several dates were indeed tentatively proposed in the ensuing months, but they clashed with previous commitments, and the dates I counter-proposed didn’t seem to work, so it all fizzled out, and if I hadn’t come across his email while writing this chapter, I would have thought I’d dreamt it all. Was that book ever published? I don’t think so, though Mrs Mubarak would have quite a story to tell now, if she were able to, and given that she is a highly educated woman who has been widely honoured for her work for deprived children and women’s rights, it would be interesting to be approached again. But that, I’m sure, is a dream.

  What wasn’t a dream, though in retrospect it seems like one, was the appearance at the 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair of Muhammad Ali. He’d been brought by the German publisher Taschen to promote a book oddly called GOAT (Greatest of All Time). I say a book, but it was actually an 800-page colossus containing 600,000 words of text and over 3,000 images, reproduced on the finest art paper, measuring fifty by fifty centimetres and weighing in at seventy pounds. There were two special editions, one of 1,000 copies each signed and priced at $75,000, and one of 9,000 copies priced at $3,000 each. The publisher had brought not only Muhammad to Frankfurt, but also his wife Lonnie, his legendary trainer, Angelo Dundee, Howard Bingham and several other boxing luminaries. There were huge posters for the book all over the fair, but I hadn’t quite taken in that Ali himself would be there until the journalist Roger Tagholm, who was covering the fair for Publishing News, asked me if I was going to the press conference. I hadn’t realised there was one, so Roger gave me the details and said he’d pick me up and somehow smuggle me in.

  Taschen had spent a fortune flying everyone in from America, and had also built a full-size boxing ring in Hall 4, in which Ali appeared, doing his famous shuffle for the huge cheering crowd that had gathered around. That was before the press conference to which Roger now led me, somehow sweet-talking the officials on the door into letting me in. Ali, Angelo Dundee and the others were seated behind a long table facing a packed room, cameras everywhere. Almost immediately I ran into Howard Bingham, who embraced me and told me they were all staying at the hotel by the fair entrance, and that I should join them there afterwards. They were booked in under a different name, which he gave me, and with this magic password I was later directed to their suite.

  Diffidently, I knocked on the door, and Lonnie Ali opened it, greeting me like a long-lost friend before introducing me to the others in the room, including Mr Taschen. I didn’t tell him that I’d had some correspondence with his company after they’d made the mistake of quoting extensively from Thomas Hauser’s book and going to press without obtaining our permission. That didn’t put them in a strong position, and as well as extracting a decent fee for Tom, I managed to get them to agree to send me a copy of the book. I didn’t know what I was getting until I saw it at the fair, and when it eventually arrived in a wooden case the weight was such that I had to get help carrying it in! It was one of my better deals.

  Understandably exhausted by the flight and his appearances that afternoon, Ali was asleep when I arrived. I sat and talked to the others in the sitting room until Lonnie eventually got up and said, ‘Go into the bedroom, he’ll be glad to see you,’ which I hesitantly did, not wanting to disturb him and not knowing quite what to say. Lonnie and Howard followed me in and, as I approached the bed in the dimly lit room, Ali looked up, smiled and pointed to his cheek. ‘He wants you to kiss him,’ said Lonnie, and kiss him I did.

  That night I phoned Carole in London and told her I’d just kissed the man she thought had the most beautiful profile of any man she’d ever met. ‘Don’t tell me Muhammad Ali is in Frankfurt,’ she said. He certainly was, and I was glad to share the story with Roger Tagholm, who’d made it all happen. Yes, Frankfurt brings strange and unexpected encounters, but none, for me, was as memorable as those touching few minutes in that hotel room with The Greatest of All Time.

  23

  TED HUGHES: A FAMILY AFFAIR

  In the years since we were in Israel together, Ted Hughes had of course written and published many fine poems and books, and been appointed Poet Laureate, but although we communicated from time to time and met up at the occasional reading, I had seen very little of him. Whenever his daughter Frieda had an exhibition of her paintings in London, he would send us a note urging us to come to the opening. We’d had several invitations to visit Ted and Carol at Court Green, and while we always tried to go to Frieda’s exhibitions, for some reason we never managed to get to Devon. At one stage, his visits to London had been limited by the cost of coming by train from Exeter, which he bemoaned in an amusing letter to me: ‘As for other expenses, I never get away from London these days for under £100. If I stay two nights, I daren’t count.’ And that was in 1988! In the same letter, he writes of a conversation he’d recently had with a poet who had just returned from a group reading tour of Israel and was describing her experiences. When Ted mentioned that he had been on a similar trip, ‘Oh yes,’ she said (obviously groping to remember something very faint), ‘somebody did say something about some English poets once having read somewhere.’ ‘So much for rocks impregnable and gates of steel,’ Ted concluded wryly.

  The fact that my own poetry had dried up had led me to shy away from poetry circles, though my friendship with Dannie Abse was as strong as ever, and I continued to publish Vernon Scannell, who would stay with us from time to time. The publishing involvement and commitments, and the resulting demands on our time and finances, had become all-consuming, and when, sometime in 1997, I was taking a lunchtime stroll along Clipstone Street, where our office was situated, I was deep in thought and didn’t notice the man who walked past me in the opposite direction until we were some twenty yards apart. Something made me look back at the tall, powerful, sports-jacketed figure I’d just passed, and I thought, ‘Surely that’s Ted Hughes.’ I turned and walked back after him, not wanting to call his name until I was quite sure, but he went into the restaurant beneath our office and joined some people at a table near the back. It was Ted, I could see that now, but I felt it would be an intrusion to follow him in and I left it, thinking I’d write to him. Ted had always been warm and welcoming, and if I’d had the presence of mind to send through a note, he might well have had time to come up to the office for a chat. He had, after all, suggested in several letters that we meet up for a meal. But life is full of missed chances.

  Not long after, in January 1998, Ted’s bombshell book Birthday Letters was published. Written over a period of twenty-five years and directed almost entirely to Sylvia Plath, these personal and urgent poems are Ted’s account of their turbulent relationship. In October of that same year came the shocking news of his death. In due course, it was announced that there was to be a service of thanksgiving for his life at Westminster Abbey on 13 May 1998, and Carol Hughes kindly sent me a note asking whether we would like to attend and telling me how to obtain tickets. She also asked me to pass the details on to Dannie and Joan Abse. Come the day, I arranged to meet Carole and the Abses outside the abbey, but there was a huge crowd and, unable to see them anywhere and realising the service would be starting shortly, I wandered in alone, somehow bypassing the ushers who were sho
wing people to their places. Since I still couldn’t spot the others, I parked myself unthinkingly on an empty seat near the front.

  Directly opposite me, in the wide area between the high altar and the quire, there was a grand piano, and looking at the order of service I saw that Alfred Brendel would be playing the Adagio from Beethoven’s Sonata No. 17, Op. 31, No. 2. I hadn’t expected that, nor had I expected to see the people who slowly made their way to the seats in front of me and whom I recognised with a start as members of the royal family – the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, followed by representatives of the Queen and Prince Philip, and other dignitaries. Of course! Ted had been the Poet Laureate and commanded royal respect, and in his case considerable affection. And of course I wasn’t sitting where I was supposed to be, though fortunately I hadn’t sat one row further forward! Nearby, too, were the close members of Ted’s family – Carol, his sister Olwyn, daughter Frieda, son Nicholas and brother Gerald.

  That day the abbey was filled with fine poetry, mostly Ted’s, and wonderful music. It was an awe-inspiring occasion. The Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney delivered a powerful and moving eulogy in which he called Ted ‘a guardian spirit of the land and language’. And then, as the concluding reading before the Tallis Scholars sang Thomas Tallis’s ‘Spem In Alium’, a recording was played of Ted himself reading Shakespeare’s song from Cymbeline: