Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  I finished my first book thirty years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous and it did not get into print until, fifty years later, publishers would publish anything that had my name on it … I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without either being good business men or fine judges of literature. All that is necessary in the production of a book is an author and a bookseller, without the intermediate parasite.

  Despite the constant cash-flow strain, there were moments of hilarity in the office. On one occasion, a very attractive Italian girl with a degree in philosophy came to be interviewed for a job as our receptionist (those were the days!). She had vanished to the loo when I came out to meet her, returning a minute or two later and explaining that she’d gone there to take off her sneakers. Unfortunately her pronunciation wasn’t perfect and instead of ‘sneakers’ she said loudly that she’d taken off her ‘snickers’, which sounded very much like something else. After the interview, everyone rushed in to ask how it had gone!

  The arrival of Derek Nimmo to sign copies of Oh, Come on All Ye Faithful!, his book of church humour, was also entertaining. It wasn’t just the Rolls-Royce he drew up in, which seemed to float rather than roll on its wheels, but also his wizened old chauffeur, who was as much a character as his employer. Always dressed to the nines in spats, white bow tie and velvet jacket with gold buttons bearing a coat of arms, he looked like something from a previous century, and he was in a way, being of noble stock and now finding himself in a very different kind of driving seat. It was his coat of arms, not Derek’s. I always felt he was the one we should have signed up, but we did use him to great effect on the cover of Derek’s humorous book about class, Not in Front of the Servants. The two of them would have made Jacob Rees-Mogg look like a hippie. An ardent member of the Garrick Club, Derek chided me gently for the fact that, as a newish and somewhat reticent member, I only went there occasionally for lunch or dinner. ‘I do object to people who just use the club as a cafeteria,’ he said. He would not have approved my giving up my membership, as I did later.

  It was at another club, the Savile, that I had a narrow escape, having been taken for what turned out to be a very liquid lunch by comedian Jimmy Edwards, former air force pilot, schoolmaster and star of the very popular TV series Whack-O, whose book Six of the Best we’d just published. I’d survived the meal, but later found myself alone with him at the club’s snooker table, feeling that I was being stalked, his trademark handlebar moustache coming ever closer as we potted away. Although his book was mainly about his war experiences, in the TV series (written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden) he played the part of a drunken, gambling, cane-swishing headmaster. Now, as he downed yet more wine, he seemed to be transforming into the character he’d made famous, and when he raised his snooker cue I sensed he might bring it into play any moment – but not on the table. I thanked him for a memorable lunch as warmly as I could and beat a hasty retreat down Brook Street and back to the safety of my office.

  Jimmy Edwards, with whom I had a dangerous game of snooker at his club.

  * * *

  Given the high-profile nature of many of our books, we inevitably ran into legal problems from time to time. I’ve already mentioned the bother over Harry Secombe’s Welsh Fargo, but far more worrying was a complaint from Mothercare, the childrenswear retailer, over a book we’d bought from St Martin’s Press called Mother Care. They accused us of ‘passing off’, and the case went to the High Court, our counsel arguing that the fact that the words were separate made all the difference, and that you couldn’t, in any case, simply remove words from the English language and appropriate them. As Anthony Harkavy articulated it in correspondence with Mothercare’s solicitors, ‘It hardly lies in the mouth of your clients to complain about our client’s use of the words “mother” and “care” in juxtaposition, when our client’s publication is concerned about the care of mothers and your client’s business is concerned with the care of children and not of mothers’ – a proposition which Robert Alexander QC, acting for the plaintiffs, by some magical forensic sleight of hand, managed to entice the judge into rejecting.

  Alexander had been retained only the night before, as the previously retained counsel had had to withdraw at the last moment, and he’d evidently been up all night reading the papers. It was our bad luck since, as a result of his brilliant advocacy, Mothercare succeeded in obtaining an interim injunction to restrain publication, and our insurers declined to cover us for the costs that would be incurred in an appeal. Without that cover, we couldn’t go on. Some years later, Anthony, who’d been convinced from the moment we consulted him that our case was strong, phoned and told me to look at that day’s Times law report. Penguin had published a book with the same title as ours, been sued by Mothercare, had presented the same arguments in defence as we had, and won the day! That hurt.

  In retrospect, I realise I should have left well alone, and been satisfied with our much better (and safer) book Blooming Pregnant, by Kay Burley and Cathy Hopkins. But hindsight is a wonderful thing!

  Next in the ring was Barry McGuigan, ‘The Clones Cyclone’, whose charisma extended far beyond the boxing ring, his career having been brilliantly managed by the millionaire Irish boxing promoter Barney Eastwood. They were an unstoppable combination as McGuigan fought his way to the world title, and those emotional nights in Belfast when Barry’s father Pat entered the ring and sang ‘Danny Boy’ before the action started thrilled fans on both sides of the troubled border. I, for one, never missed a bout. And then, in a nightmare fight in Las Vegas, boxing in extreme heat, Barry lost his world title, and everything fell apart. He had a compelling story to tell, and when we were approached by an Irish agent representing him and two highly respected writers who were working with him – Harry Mullan, editor of Boxing News, and Gerry Callan, Ireland’s Sports Writer of the Year – I couldn’t resist. I wish I had.

  The book was explosive in its claims of what went on both inside and outside the ring, and we had several meetings with the agent and the authors (and Barry) in Anthony Harkavy’s office, where Anthony challenged and cross-examined them on what he rightly saw were the legal flashpoints. What none of them revealed (and we would have pulled out of the book if they had) was that McGuigan was being sued in the Irish courts by Barney Eastwood over accusations he’d made against him on air. The first I knew about it was when I turned on the TV news one night to hear that Eastwood had won a libel action against the boxer and been awarded substantial damages. It was alarming, since the authors seemed to have covered much the same ground in the book, and it wasn’t long before we received a complaint, by fax, from Eastwood’s lawyers. I was leaving at that very moment on holiday, and I quickly passed what seemed to me a very alarming and trenchantly worded complaint to Anthony to consider, knowing just how trenchant he too could be. I phoned him from Italy and was worried when he told us our insurers wouldn’t let him act and were instructing their own lawyers, Rubinstein, Callingham, Polden and Gale.

  On my return, I had a meeting with John Rubinstein, and counsel was instructed, but once we learned that McGuigan had lost the appeal he’d launched against the previous judgment, we were advised that the cost of contesting the case in Ireland would be substantial and the chances of success slim. We settled on the best terms we could and withdrew the book. One thing I learned from that very damaging outing was never to get in the middle of someone else’s fight, because you’re the one who is likely to end up getting hit.

  Then there was Leo Abse, elder brother of Dannie, Labour MP for Pontypool from 1958 to 1983 and then MP for Torfaen, a distinguished lawyer and a man who had put on the statute books more legislation than any other backbencher of his time, radically reforming many laws that impinged on human relationships – including those relating to children, divorce, family planning and
homosexuality. The firebrand Leo couldn’t have been more different from his poet brother. A flamboyant dresser whose outfit on Budget Day was always striking, he was a man who could mesmerise you with the power and passion of his oratory and his intellectual agility. Dannie always maintained that Leo hadn’t become Home Secretary because he was a constant thorn in the side of the Prime Minister, and that may well have been so. On the other hand, Leo was a rebel and I suspect he never particularly wanted high office, happier to be free to snipe and canvass from the back benches.

  The dynamic Leo Abse loved to be controversial and would stand his ground like the brilliant lawyer and crusading MP that he was.

  Nothing could muzzle or silence Leo, and where his books were concerned he never held back in his psychoanalytical examination of his subjects. Margaret Thatcher was his first victim, in a book called Margaret, Daughter of Beatrice. Tony Blair, yet to become Prime Minister, was his second, in a scorching book we published called The Man Behind the Smile. Coming from the pen of a long-serving Labour MP, it caused a sensation, Leo having used all his contacts and his publicity savvy to make sure it did. I watched in wonder. As with all his books, he exaggerated, but at the same time he hit many nails right on the head in his no-holds-barred polemic, and how prescient his book proved to be:

  As an actor or performer [Blair] doubtless brought pleasure; his small step from stage to political platform in search of identity may have assisted him in his personal resolution, but it left my Labour Party shorn; he has taken away the identity of Labour and reshaped it to suit his own psychological measurements. This operation is described by his supporters as ‘reform’: I call it theft.

  Reviewing the book in The Times, Matthew Parris called it ‘fine raillery … touched by genius’ and that sums it up perfectly.

  Whenever Leo had a book out, Dannie would jokingly say that he was leaving the country – easy to see why. He would also joke that his dandy brother wore his cast-offs. Dannie, as anyone who knew him will attest, seemed to wear the same sports jacket for years, just as he always appeared to be driving the same small car. It wasn’t actually so, it was just that he always bought the same model – of both jacket and car. Leo, by contrast, at one time owned a white Rolls-Royce, and was evidently offended when Dannie used the phrase ‘as ostentatious as a white Rolls-Royce’ in something he wrote. What an extraordinary family the Abses were!

  Another of Leo’s books for us was about the Germans, Wotan, My Enemy, which opens with the arresting short sentence, ‘Despite the Germans, I was born.’ Another uncompromising polemic, it won awards, was serialised and widely discussed, and was often over the top. Whenever there was something I thought legally questionable in Leo’s books and drew it to his attention, he would laugh at my caution and say reassuringly, ‘Leave the law to me.’ In the case of Wotan, I wish I hadn’t. We had recently acquired our house in Normandy and were enjoying an after-dinner Calvados or two with Jan and Anthony Harkavy when Leo phoned to say we’d received a complaint from the law firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of one of their clients, an historian, who’d seen an early review copy of the book and maintained that Leo had misrepresented his attitude towards the Germans in a way that damaged his reputation. (This was shortly to be followed by a similar complaint from a second historian, instructing the same lawyers.) Since our own lawyer was by my side and still sober enough to converse, I put him on the phone, and after Leo had read their complaining letter to him they discussed tactics.

  Carter-Ruck’s letter was aggressive and challenging, but Leo (who volunteered to respond in our absence) rose to the challenge and retaliated with a series of equally forceful letters – a master class, Anthony Harkavy thought, in legal know-how and expression. In fact, Leo fired two salvoes, one firmly rebutting the allegations, and with it a second ‘without prejudice letter’ opening the way to a quick compromise and settlement, time being of the essence as we were on the point of publishing. In the end, Anthony and Leo felt it was expedient to moderate the offending paragraphs. However, when a reviewer in the Telegraph went too far in remarks about Leo, Anthony moved into action on his behalf and Leo received both an apology and a sum in settlement. This offset the costs we’d incurred in revising the book, and we all celebrated over a lively dinner at Leo’s club, the Savile.

  Anthony Harkavy takes times off from advising us legally (and from his piano) to play clarinet with singer Stella Starr at our 25th wedding anniversary party, held at the historic Samuel Pepys pub in the City.

  The launches of Leo’s books were always memorable: one at Politico’s bookstore near Westminster (then owned and run by Iain Dale) where Tam Dalyell spoke; another at the Freud Museum where Michael Foot, introducing the book, treated us to a demonstration of his own remarkable oratory. But the press conferences Leo would call were the main event, where his eloquence was riveting. The more he was attacked, the more he relished it, his lawyer’s mind fashioning a powerful response as he rose to his feet. He could be a difficult man, but he was also a warm and entertaining one, and doubtless only came my way, relatively late in his life, because, as he always told everyone, I was a friend of his brother Dannie. I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

  Our daughters Deborah and Manuela take time off from their studies to give a joint speech at our 25th wedding anniversary party.

  * * *

  We’d bought our bolt-hole in France when the pound was high against the franc (no euros then!). Our twin daughters were studying French as their main language at university (strangely for two such independent-minded girls, they had both opted for Birmingham, attracted by the strength of its language departments and its large, airy campus). Both had friends in Paris, where Carole also had relations, and so we had the feeling they’d settle in France eventually. That had led us to look around in the Normandy area, not too far from Paris. Manuela had been studying German as a second language, her year abroad being divided between Lyons and Freiberg Universities. When her time at Lyons was up, we offered to drive her to Freiberg, and it was on that trip that we stayed for a couple of nights at the charming French port of Honfleur, looked in the windows of various estate agents, saw how relatively low the prices were, and were hooked.

  Deborah, on the other hand, had taken Russian as her second language, and spent some months at Moscow University, sharing a flat with some Russian girls also studying there. We visited her for a week, but despite perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev’s valiant attempts at glasnost and reform, we felt it to be a depressing and threatening city. Perhaps I had been reading too much John le Carré, but we seemed to be under constant surveillance as we entered and left our sprawling hotel and wandered the city, visiting Lenin’s mausoleum in the eerie Red Square and the usual tourist landmarks, while dodging the rattling old cars that raced down the wide roads, their spinning wheels clinging on for dear life. There were queues for food, and very little to be found on the market stalls, though if you had dollars you would find a warm enough welcome and a reasonable menu in restaurants that were generally tucked away down several flights of stairs. It was in a dusty market near one of these that we saw several paintings that looked like Cézannes lying on the ground, unframed, the edges of the canvas curled. Students’ copies though they were, they were excellent and we happily paid the modest asking price, and also bought a balalaika that lay beside them.

  In stark contrast were the palatial Underground stations, and the magnificent city of St Petersburg, to which we travelled with Deborah and a friend on a packed overnight train before exploring the palaces and museums of that magical city together. On our return to Moscow, and deeply conscious of the oppression and persecution Russian Jewry had suffered, we felt impelled to visit a synagogue, finding ourselves walking cautiously down a narrow street until we came to a small doorway. We knocked several times and eventually a nervous guard let us in, leaving us alone to stand hand in hand, in silence, in the small old sanctuary, as tears overwhelmed the three of us simultaneously:

&
nbsp; … the echoes, the shadows, the Babi Yar memories,

  the wary eyes everywhere as we approached.

  So often the Prayer for the Dead to be said…

  We weren’t sorry to leave Moscow and as the plane rose from the runway we both felt a sense of relief, and I believe Deborah felt the same when she joined us a month or two later, though she had made good friends there. Ironically, neither she nor Manuela ended up living or working in Paris, but we always spend the summer together in Normandy.

  Later the following year, their foreign adventures well and truly over, Carole and I found ourselves at their degree ceremony in Birmingham, sitting expectantly in a grand, crowded hall with other parents and graduates awaiting their proud moment, cameras at the ready, joining the polite applause. Twins arrive together, but they also depart together, and as we waited I couldn’t help but think back to that Sunday morning four years earlier when, steeling ourselves, Carole and I had driven them to Birmingham, our car bulging with the usual clobber – and how, returning home that evening as darkness fell, we’d sat together on the sofa, listening to the resounding silence of an empty house, feeling bereft, thinking our daughters were gone for ever. But they weren’t, far from it, and now, my mind back in the hall, we waited for their names to be called – but then when Deborah’s name was read out we did a double-take, for up went Manuela to shake the Chancellor’s hand and receive her sister’s degree, and when Manuela’s name was called, up went Deborah. Fortunately, nobody noticed except their anxious parents and their friends, who thought it was a hoot. After all the adventures we had shared over the years, and knowing they had occasionally swapped places at school to mischievously fool an unsuspecting new teacher, we shouldn’t have been surprised; and they continue to surprise us as they pursue their separate lives and careers, remaining touchingly close to each other and to us. Double fun and double blessing in every respect.