Vernon showed me some photos of himself in the ring, and took down an early collection of my own poems which he said he had been rereading and asked me to sign it. I was deeply touched. Despite how ill he was, he looked remarkably strong and was as articulate as ever, though his voice was a little hoarse and he was struggling to hide the discomfort, even pain, he was suffering – but he was still able to down a pint of brown ale. He seemed genuinely pleased I had come, and I found it hard to contain my emotion. Somehow it brought life (and death) into real focus and was a sharp reminder of where life’s true values lay. I went away with two inscribed volumes of Vernon’s more recent poems, and we corresponded regularly until he finally succumbed. His last, generous letter to me – a declaration of friendship, really – contained a copy of his last poem, ‘Missing Things’; its poignant lines, a few of which I quote below, take me back to the meal we’d enjoyed in that kitchen, and the books on its shelves.
Already I begin to miss the things
I’ll leave behind, like this calm evening sun
which seems to smile at how the blackbird sings.
There’s something valedictory in the way
my books gaze down on me from where they stand
in disciplined disorder and display
the same goodwill that well-wishers on land
convey to troops who sail away to where
great danger waits. Those books will miss the hand
that turned the pages with great care…
Fortunately, Vernon’s voice still speaks to us through the lines of many memorable poems, particularly those relating to his experiences in the Second World War, which haunted him all his life.
* * *
Back in the world of Michael Winner, all was as surreal as ever. His Christmas cards continued to be sent out early, more like adverts for his latest book than seasonal messages of goodwill – the cover of his book on one side, quotes from reviews on the other. One year, to vary things, he put a photo of himself with the Queen on the front, but the book cover still appeared inside. For his last-but-one book, I took him as a guest speaker to the Daily Mail’s annual Christmas lunch at the Lancaster London Hotel in Hyde Park, where there were hundreds of guests and two other speakers, the journalist and television personality Rachel Johnson, and the BBC’s war correspondent Kate Adie. Winner was to speak last. I have always had a good relationship with the Mail and have sold many serial rights to them over the years, so I was particularly anxious for Michael to be pleasant to people, but he wasn’t. True, he was quite shaky by then, having been taken perilously ill in Barbados after eating raw oysters and been rushed back to the London Clinic in an air ambulance arranged by Philip Green, which had probably saved his life. He’d remained in hospital for a worryingly long time with a horrific wasting disease of his left leg which specialists struggled to identify. He had undergone numerous life-saving operations and been pronounced clinically dead on several occasions. Miraculously, his leg was saved and he survived against all the odds to shout again, though he walked with difficulty, using a stick. Geraldine and Dinah, ministering angels, had been with him around the clock, and again during his all-too-frequent follow-up visits to the clinic. Amazingly, through it all, he’d still managed, with Geraldine’s help, to produce his Sunday Times column, and even to criticise the hospital food. Leopards don’t change their spots.
When it came to his annual Christmas card, Michael Winner certainly knew how to plug his latest book.
At that Mail lunch he was at his most restless and tetchy, and Ed Victor, Geraldine and I did our best to keep him under control, but it wasn’t easy, especially as the meal was running late and the service was unusually slow. He kept threatening to leave and told his fellow speakers that they were not to go on for more than ten minutes or he would ‘walk’. Rachel Johnson, who was sitting next to him, later told me he’d got her so flustered she could hardly speak, which is saying something for a member of the Johnson clan. Wittily introduced by Gyles Brandreth, and helped onto the stage by Geraldine, Michael launched into his usual star-studded speech, attacking Esther Rantzen, with whom he’d had a run-in on her TV show, and sprinkling his overlong speech with four-letter words, which some of the audience – out for a jolly Christmas lunch – didn’t appreciate. He was far from his best, and even his entertaining Hollywood stories about Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, Sophia Loren and others seemed to fall flat. The following week, Sandra Parsons, the paper’s literary editor, phoned to say the editor had received letters of complaint and wasn’t pleased. Sandra is not only a superb editor but also the most delightful of people, and I was sorry to have been inadvertently responsible for those unfortunate repercussions.
By the time Michael came to his last two books, I had to ask him not to phone other people in the office because he was so rude and aggressive. I told him he could be as offensive to me as he liked, but not to staff who couldn’t answer back. He laughed, and almost apologised, and peace reigned for a while, but then he was off again on some tirade or other. At this stage in my journey I had my own imprint within Iain Dale’s politically orientated company, Biteback, and after a while Iain, who can himself be intemperate, felt, understandably, that our staff should not be subjected to Winner’s outbursts, and wrote him a full-blooded letter saying his behaviour wouldn’t be tolerated and more or less telling him not to cross our threshold again. I waited for the explosion, but when Michael finally responded – from Switzerland, where he was spending Christmas – it wasn’t in the way we expected. Here’s how his email (in caps, of course) started:
DEAR IAIN
I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
I GREATLY ENJOYED YOUR ROBUST CORRESPONDENCE. I WAS ONLY DISAPPOINTED YOU FAILED TO SAY I’D KICKED YOUR DOG AND EMPTIED THE WATER FROM YOUR GOLDFISH BOWL.
He then went on to ask a few polite questions about his royalty statement. And that was that. (At least Iain hadn’t wrestled him to the ground as he did an anti-nuclear protestor who’d got his placard in the way of the cameras as an author of Iain’s, Damian McBride, was giving a live TV interview on the Brighton seafront for his whistleblowing new book.)
After announcing his engagement to Geraldine, who’d been a girlfriend of his when he was a very young film director and she an actress and ballet dancer, Michael added, ‘I’ve told Geraldine that it took me seventy-two years to get engaged, so she’s not to hold her breath for the marriage.’ Nevertheless, four years later, in September 2011, they tied the knot at Chelsea Town Hall, with Michael and Shakira Caine as witnesses. Michael had seemed lonely before Geraldine came back into his life, though in the time I knew him there had been several girlfriends. He didn’t like to be without a lady at his side, especially as he regularly went off on luxurious holidays and enjoyed trying out country hotels and restaurants at the weekend. His house, too, was very large, and although he had staff and Dinah remained a good friend and confidante, and would sometimes accompany him, she had a husband and family to look after.
In the same year as his marriage, we published our seventh book with Michael, Tales I Never Told – though you can bet that he had! He was still making periodic visits to the London Clinic, some requiring him to stay in, and was clearly struggling. He was especially friendly during that late period of his life, and we would have long phone conversations in which he told me he was dying and going to be bankrupt. I suggested he cut down on the private jets and get a bus pass. I also told him that if he’d kept to his Jewish roots and not eaten oysters (strictly non-kosher), he would be in better health. He’d laugh and stick to his old ways. He was, though, trying to sell his house, or so he said, and when it was sold after his death to Robbie Williams, I read that the singer had called in an American healer to exorcise Michael’s spirit, as his wife was spooked by what she believed was his presence watching her and silently criticising her as she changed the decor of his Victorian mansion. I couldn’t help thinking that if Michael had really been there she’d have heard h
im all right!
We planned two more books, one being The Hymie Joke Book, which drew on the often very funny Jewish jokes he’d been appending to his Sunday Times column. There’s chutzpah for you. Here’s a typical Hymie joke: Hymie’s friend goes to confession. ‘I’m ninety-two years old, got a wife of seventy, children and grandchildren. Yesterday I picked up two college girls hitchhiking and had sex with each of them three times.’ The priest asks: ‘Are you sorry for your sins?’ Abe: ‘What sins?’ Priest: ‘What kind of Catholic are you?’ Abe: ‘I’m Jewish.’ Priest: ‘Then why are you telling me all this?’ Abe: ‘I’m ninety-two years old. I’m telling everybody.’ The Hymie jokes inspired quite a cult following, and the book appeared just before Michael died, but he was too frail to promote it.
The second book we’d contracted never came to fruition, but the following email from Michael gives a taste of what might have been:
TRAWL THROUGH MY DIARIES WOULD SHOW WHO I’D SEEN AND WHEN FOR EXAMPLE 1962 I INTERVIEWED GLENDA JACKSON TO PLAY A HAMBURGER DUMP WAITRESS, CHOSE SOMEONE ELSE THAT WOULD LEAD TO GLENDA STORIES. I HAVE WELL OVER 50 YEARS OF DIARIES, REJECTED SPICE GIRL FOR WICKED LADY, MY COMMENTS ON HER WHEN WE MET, ALL A REASON FOR TELLING MORE SHOWBIZ TALES. ACTUALLY MY DIARIES GO BACK TO CAMBRIDGE AND BEFORE WHEN I TRAVELLED THRU USA ON STUDENT TOUR, LOTSA VERY FUNNY STUFF AS I HAVE ALWAYS PROVIDED. REGARDS MW
Curiously, when I asked to see his diaries after his death, I was told there weren’t any. Could he really have been inventing it?
Michael died in January 2013. I phoned the house to express my condolences and find out when the funeral would be, and was informed it would be the next day, ‘since in the Jewish religion burial occurs very soon after death’. I was surprised, because he’d religiously avoided being associated publicly with anything Jewish and never wanted to be interviewed by Jewish papers, although he occasionally allowed me to persuade him. After his death, I also discovered that he had quietly given donations to a synagogue and a school in Israel for troubled children that his parents had been involved with, once taking time to visit it when he was filming there with Jenny Seagrove, who became a long-time partner. Evidently, a grave in the Orthodox Jewish cemetery in Willesden had been paid for and kept for his mother, who for some reason was buried in France, so that was where Michael was to be buried – ironic really, since he was born in Willesden and it was hardly his beat in more recent years. It was even more ironic in that his grave turned out to be just a few yards from that of my great-uncle and -aunt, Sam and Rosie Snowman, the delightful old couple we used to see walking arm in arm along Finchley Road. I suspect they are not the permanent bedfellows Michael would have chosen… nor they him!
Dinah later told me that when it looked as if Michael was approaching the end, a rabbi was called to the house. It was felt that if he was going to officiate at Michael’s funeral, it would be helpful to have met him. I gather the rabbi’s initial response was, ‘In the Jewish religion we don’t do last rites,’ but he came, and when Michael (who had rallied slightly) became aware of what was happening, he was furious, saying, ‘Get that man out of my house.’ True to form to the last.
When Carole and I arrived for Michael’s funeral, I was approached by Bob Tyrer, executive editor of the Sunday Times, with whom I’d dealt and become friendly over the years, and various reporters from that paper, hoping I could explain what the ceremony would entail, and I did my best to fill them in. As we moved from the prayer hall, where the ceremony starts, following the coffin to the grave, Carole and I found ourselves walking beside Michael Parkinson and fell into an easy conversation about Winner. As we passed my father’s grave, I pointed it out to him, and he in turn started telling me about his own parents and family background. It was an intimate and affecting moment.
Later, I told Michael that when we had first suggested to Winner that he should try to appear on his talk show, he’d said, ‘Parkinson won’t have me’ (though in the end he did). Michael smiled at this, and answered intriguingly, ‘One day I’ll tell you why.’ I await the day.
28
THE WORST OF TIMES
Dannie Abse was always a reluctant traveller, though happy to go to Cardiff when the Bluebirds were playing at home (frustrating as that experience usually was) and to spend time with Joan in the house they’d bought in Ogmore-by-Sea. We had stayed there several times, and although we tried to persuade Dannie to visit us in France, he always found some excuse, smiling and dodging our invitation – until, that is, the summer of 2002. We had just published an unusual novel of his, The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds & Dr Glas, inspired by an old Swedish classic. Set in 1950s London, it was a luminous story of love, infatuation and deceit, and had received marvellous reviews. I think Joan – always Dannie’s guiding light and the mistress of his conscience – felt we should all celebrate together in France, and he finally agreed.
We set off for the airport, just the three of us since Carole had gone ahead and would be meeting us with the car at Caen. We arrived early at Stansted and, as we had a little time to kill, I took Dannie and Joan into the large Past Times shop to show them the range of our titles stocked there. Now defunct, it was then a popular chain and a major customer of ours, particularly for titles in the ‘Strangest’ series (Cricket’s Strangest Matches, Law’s Strangest Cases and so on), which they ordered and reordered in very large numbers. Seeing the gift-book style of their stock, Dannie had the idea of compiling an anthology of love poems; when we came back I put his proposal to the Past Times buyer, Susanna Geoghegan, and she went for it. Already a profitable trip for us all!
Having met up with Carole, we suggested that since we were so close they might like to visit the Normandy landing beaches, but Joan recoiled at the idea. The look of alarm – almost panic – in her eyes was a reminder of just how deep her feelings were about war, just how abhorrent she found it. We drove in the other direction, to our more tranquil house.
That week together was a wonderful time. I remember Dannie reading to Joan in the garden poems by Sidney Keyes, whose work he admired. Considered one of the outstanding poets of the Second World War, Keyes was killed in 1943, a month before his 21st birthday, while covering his platoon’s retreat in Tunisia. Hearing this very young man’s poems read by Dannie in the stillness of a Normandy evening was an uplifting experience. It seemed as if Bloomsbury had come to Normandy.
Late one afternoon, I returned to the house to find Carole and the Abses in high spirits, Dannie saying, ‘You know, I’ve a feeling there’s some good news about my book.’ After a few minutes he came clean and told me that Dr Simmonds had been longlisted for the Booker Prize. It was a Saturday, and Dannie had phoned his daughter Keren, herself a keen Cardiff City supporter, to see whether their team had won that afternoon. She had been highly relieved to hear from him, breaking the news and shouting, ‘Dad, everyone’s trying to talk to you and the trade press want to speak to Jeremy.’ Stupidly, we’d forgotten to leave our number. Now there was a real cause for celebration, and we sat on the hammock in our garden drinking champagne as the sun set. Unfortunately, Dannie didn’t win the Booker, but the very fact of being on the longlist boosted our sales significantly and we had an immediate scale-out from Waterstones and repeat orders all round. We also managed to sell the US rights on the back of it. When the book was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize, the sales got a further boost. Since we weren’t really publishers of fiction, that was an exciting and rewarding time.
There was one minor let-down in that very special weekend with the Abses. Invariably, when Carole and I went to eat in nearby Honfleur, a striking-looking man with a black cloak and long white hair would appear, moving from table to table and introducing himself as ‘the poet of Honfleur’. He had a charming manner and would easily seduce lady diners into buying a volume of his poems – usually love poems illustrated in full colour – especially after he had looked into their eyes and recited to them. They never struck me as being very good, but he claimed to have known Prévert and Azna
vour and we generally exchanged a friendly word or two, Carole sometimes feeling obliged to buy a book despite my protestations. I was so looking forward to stopping him mid-flow and introducing him to Dannie and Dannie to him as ‘the poet of Golders Green’, but for some reason he didn’t appear that evening. How disappointing!
* * *
We only went twice to BookExpo, the American Booksellers Association’s annual book fair. The first time was in 1981 to Anaheim on the outskirts of Los Angeles, when we made a family holiday of it and also took the opportunity to stay with our old Goon Show friend, Max Geldray, who’d settled and married there and was working at the Betty Ford Center. He was still in close touch with Peter Sellers and saw him when he came to film in LA. There was a lot of catching up to do, during which I convinced Max to write a memoir of his years in Paris performing with Django and other jazz greats, and of his Goon Show days and friendship with Peter. We called it Goon with the Wind.
Our second BookExpo was in 2005 in New York, which was far more productive from a business point of view. In some ways, unlike Frankfurt, it had a party air about it – partly because booksellers seemed to hold the high ground, with publishers presenting their upcoming wares to them rather than to other publishers, though not exclusively so, and there were many launches, presentations and celebrations. For me, it was valuable to meet a number of smaller US publishers who never came to Frankfurt, such as the Santa Monica Press, from whom I bought an appealing book, French for Le Snob, which fitted nicely into our list alongside Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t be Wrong!, which had been a surprising hit for us. Amidst the razzmatazz there were characters galore, including one swashbuckling publisher who tried to sell us several ‘hot’ Hollywood biographies that would have had us in the libel courts for years, and who also tried to cajole Carole and me into nightclubbing with him. I did my best to keep my feet on the ground, especially since I was in the middle of considering a switch from Anova to Laurence Orbach’s Quarto Group, and Laurence, who had an apartment in New York, was in town and wanting to meet up and talk.
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