by David Lough
Attlee gave Sir Edward the unenviable task of securing Churchill’s approval of his proposals. Over lunch at Chartwell, Churchill outlined his prolonged resistance to previous Cabinet Office assaults. However, in his formal response to Attlee he expressed ‘general agreement’ with the new proposals, before suggesting an ‘exceptional consideration’ for former prime ministers. To support his case, Churchill cited books recently published by General Eisenhower’s naval aide Captain Butcher, and by TIME’s former publisher Ralph Ingersoll – both men had based their criticisms of Churchill’s conduct on documents that had been made available under more liberal US rules.48 For Churchill to put his own case, he felt he needed a greater freedom of movement than other ministers.
There matters rested during the holiday season, until Churchill sent Sir Edward a five-page letter on his return, to try to accelerate a decision. ‘I am pressed from many quarters to give my account of the British war story,’ he began, ‘and, without at present making any definite plans, I have been getting my papers in order and considering the project.’ He explained that he could not help quoting extensively from documents, because ‘a great part of my work was done in writing’; but he would be happy ‘to discuss the omission of any particular phrase, sentence or passage in memoranda otherwise unobjectionable’. Adding that publication was at least two or three years away, he proposed that the government should conduct a ‘final revision of the text in detail... in case the foreign situation might be such as to make what is now harmless injurious’.
What he wanted to know, ‘without necessarily accepting the view as final’, was ‘whether in principle there would be any objection’ to his publishing three types of material: (1) papers he had written as First Lord of the Admiralty, prime minister or minister of defence; (2) extracts from his ‘immense’ series of minutes; and (3) ‘Personal’ telegrams to Roosevelt, Truman and other heads of government. He was seeking the prime minister’s view, he concluded, but felt entitled to tell his side of the story: ‘I am convinced it would be to the advantage of our country to have it told, as perhaps I alone can tell it.’49
Sir Edward Bridges interpreted Churchill’s response as surprisingly supportive. He drafted a paper for the cabinet, ‘tilted rather gently in favour of acceptance of Mr Churchill’s proposal’.50 Only the Foreign Office raised objections when the matter was debated on 10 October, but the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin missed the meeting. ‘It is 100% acceptance, with no provisoes [sic], other than those which you yourself suggested,’ Sir Edward told Churchill in a personal letter accompanying the formal approval. ‘You know, I hope, that I and my colleagues in the Cabinet Office will always be ready to give you any help we can over these questions of documents and so forth. It will be our endeavour to be as helpful to you as you have been to us.’51 It was a remarkable result, which Churchill expected would assist the sale of his memoirs in New York.
While he had waited for the official decision, Churchill made another of his periodic surveys of his finances, as he had done before the war. The picture was now transformed: even after repaying £20,000 of loans, he could still list personal assets of £187,500.52 Film rights had made all the difference: he remembered selling three for £110,000 since the start of the war, although the correct numbers were four for £142,500, all tax-free.53
The only cloud on the horizon was that Churchill’s personal expenditure was running at £15,000 a year, well above the estimate he had given a year earlier to Lord Camrose. However, his paintings and wartime speeches had paid unexpected dividends54 and he felt confident enough to pass on the gift from a London hotelier of a substantial property in Sevenoaks to a charity for wounded servicemen.55 The fruits of his war memoirs were yet to be harvested.
*1 Marshall Field III (1893–1956), founder of the Chicago Sun-Times; purchased Simon & Schuster 1944.
*2 J. H. Keeling of 105, Grosvenor Square, who worked for London & Yorkshire Trust.
*3 The chancellor, Hugh Dalton, was to leave capital transactions untouched in his Budget of April 1946, but he increased the highest rate of sur-tax to 52.5 per cent, restoring a top marginal rate of tax of 97.5 per cent. In 1962 a Conservative government introduced a short-term capital gains tax which the Labour government of 1964 made a broader, permanent part of the British fiscal system. See M. Daunton, Just Taxes, pp. 189–211.
23
‘Agreeably impressed’
Selling the Memoirs, 1946-8
Exchange rate: $4 = £1
Inflation multiples: US x 11; UK x 35
LORD CAMROSE LEFT for New York on the Queen Elizabeth in the middle of October 1946. He took with him a copy of the cabinet office’s approval, some samples of Churchill’s war minutes and a two-page synopsis of the memoirs which Churchill expected to take up five volumes.
Churchill balanced Lord Camrose’s patrician diffidence with the silky sales skills of Emery Reves, who Churchill asked at the last minute to join Lord Camrose on the Queen Elizabeth. When Reves objected that the ship would be fully booked by now, Churchill telephoned Cunard’s chairman and within twenty minutes Reves had ‘a stateroom with a bath’.
Once on board, Reves found that Lord Camrose had no idea who he was or why he was there. They came to an agreement: Lord Camrose would deal with the newspapers, while Reves would concentrate on magazine and book publishers. Nevertheless, a cautious Lord Camrose insisted upon a formal exchange of letters. ‘I think it desirable that it should be on record that 1. You are making this trip on your own account entirely; 2. Any conversation we may have does not commit either of us in any way whatsoever,’1 he wrote to his new companion. Reves was happy to sign, confident that they could reach a figure of four or five million dollars if allowed a free hand. ‘If you put such figures into the old man’s head, it will be impossible to make any deal,’ Lord Camrose warned him. Reves concluded that Lord Camrose, as the owner of The Daily Telegraph, was ‘more experienced in buying copyright than selling it’.2
They arrived in New York on 21 October 1946 and stayed in different hotels on opposite sides of Madison Square, meeting each evening to compare notes. There was a natural tension between them – Camrose was already guaranteed a slice of the spoils, Reves none. The Daily Telegraph’s New York office warned of Reves’s ‘rather slippery’ reputation, although it acknowledged that he was ‘a very enterprising person’ who knew the South American market well.3
Reves’s first visit to Collier’s Weekly did not go well. The magazine’s editor, still William Chenery, questioned Reves’s credentials to represent Churchill, with whom Chenery claimed to have just negotiated directly a $25,000 fee for an article based on a recent speech in Zürich. ‘Please cable whether this is correct,’ Reves asked Churchill that evening. ‘Sincerely believe would be mistake offering jus primae noctis [right of the first night] before marriage for any price.’4 Lord Camrose cabled Churchill to reassure him that he was in command: ‘Reves acting under close control from me but have not allowed him to mention my name for reasons of security and strategy.’5
A visit to Daniel Longwell, LIFE’s managing editor, did not go well either. Reves never mentioned it to Churchill’s biographer, his son Randolph, but Longwell recorded it in a taped interview for Time Inc.’s corporate history: ‘A little fellow by the name of Reavis [sic], I think, who had been an agent of Churchill’s, appeared and said he was representing Churchill on these memoirs,’ he recalled, ‘and that sort of threw me for a loop because I knew that he had said Camrose would be in charge. What Reves didn’t tell me was that Camrose was in town.’6
Soon afterwards, Reves warned Churchill that Lord Camrose’s style was ill-suited to the American market, which preferred raw competition to secrecy. What was needed, he claimed, was a single organization ready to shoulder all the risks of buying the entire rights package, but he claimed that Lord Camrose lacked the necessary appetite. Cooperation Publishing, on the other hand, was ready to act, funded by a wealthy Churchill admirer.
Camrose had
told Reves to drop the scheme, but Reves wanted him overruled, while insisting that their relationship remained ‘extremely cordial and satisfactory’: ‘I do hope you will understand my motive for going over the head of the Field Commander to the Commander-in-Chief,’ he told Churchill. ‘It is up to you to court martial or decorate me.’7 Churchill’s reply was terse: ‘Pray be guided by C[amrose] in everything.’8
Despite their different styles, Camrose was glad to have Reves with him. ‘He is a clever salesman with an abundance of ideas and many contacts,’ he told Churchill. ‘Where he is to figure in the ultimate picture I do not, at the moment, know but we can discuss this on my return.’ Camrose’s own approach had been characteristically British: ‘It has been my policy to be careful not to show any eagerness and, above all, to avoid any action which might result in publicity,’ he explained. ‘Up to the moment, in this direction, I have been entirely successful and not a word of my doings has appeared in the papers.’9
During the pair’s first three weeks in New York, many of their prime targets proved ill or absent – The New York Times’s Arthur Sulzberger in St Louis for a hand operation, the Chicago Sun’s Marshall Field III detained in his home city, TIME-LIFE’s Henry Luce travelling in China – but Camrose nevertheless asked for final bids on Churchill’s memoirs by Friday 22 November.
According to Reves’s account (widely accepted ever since),10 LIFE failed to bid at all that day; The New York Times offered $750,000 on its own and the Chicago Sun syndicate (including the New York Herald Tribune) bid $1,100,000 for worldwide rights, bar those already reserved for The Daily Telegraph and Cassell. According to Reves, Lord Camrose favoured the Chicago Sun bid, but Reves suggested they try one more time to get a rival offer from LIFE; he claims to have persuaded Mrs Luce to rouse her husband from a jet-lagged sleep after returning from China and convinced him to meet them on the Monday.
In fact, LIFE did bid in the first round, The New York Times did not offer $750,000 and Henry Luce had returned from China two weeks earlier, on 8 November.11 General Julius Adler, The New York Times’s general manager, had suggested to Luce that LIFE and The New York Times should work together. Luce and Longwell, LIFE’s managing editor, decided that the deal made sense: The Times’s footprint hardly ran ‘further than Trenton [New Jersey] and probably New Haven [Connecticut], and a few copies to Washington’, whereas LIFE sold five million copies nationwide.12
So Longwell did a deal with Adler: LIFE would run weekly excerpts of Churchill’s memoirs, The New York Times would run daily excerpts, except at weekends. With a week to go before Camrose’s deadline, Longwell asked his colleague Walter Graebner in London to find out what he could. Graebner met Churchill at Chartwell and reported back to Longwell:
Camrose is reporting lengthily by mail to London. In latest letter he says he has appointment with Luce November 22 at which time apparently he intends to discuss proposition. He would welcome an offer from LIFE which I am convinced he prefers to all other publications, but he explained that he could neither feel committed to LIFE nor accept lower offers from us than he got elsewhere. Our friend [Churchill] asked that entire conversation be kept in strictest confidence so please give no indication whatever to Camrose that you possess foregoing information.13
Lord Camrose arranged to meet LIFE last on the day before the 22 November deadline. The magazine’s offer of $1,250,000 included an allowance for book rights, said to be $200,000, but no named publisher. Camrose did not take Reves to the meeting and did not consult him before cabling the auction results to Churchill.
[Henry Luce] is working in conjunction with Adolph [sic].*1 Adolph has made an independent offer of 300 [$300,000] for serialization in his paper in event of Henry’s combined offer not being acceptable. Helen [Rogers Reid of the New York Herald Tribune] offer 1100 not yet definitely confirmed... Offers for American book rights from three firms all in neighbourhood of 200 but possibly final bid could be increased to 225. Possibly Henry and Helen offers might be improved in final show-down but not materially.
Camrose advised a quick closure, but spelled out his fellow-negotiator’s contrary view: ‘Reves believes that with basis of 300 from Adolph and individual nation-wide canvassing by him of all newspapers outside New York he could bring total from serial to much larger figure. This would require two to three months’ time and substantial commission. Would also necessitate considerable advance publicity.’14
Lord Camrose asked for guidance, but Churchill reminded him that only the trust could decide, before conveying that he was ‘personally agreeably impressed’ at the result; he added that ‘there seemed to be advantages in the Luce offer on account of its simplicity’, and that he had spoken to two trustees, ‘C[lementine] and BB [Brendan Bracken] who are favourable’, and was sure the third ‘CL [Professor Lindemann] would agree’.15
Reves complained to Churchill that he had not been consulted. He tried again to carve out a role for Cooperation Publishing: ‘If situation can be created giving me authority to dictate prices, I am convinced result can be greatly improved. Perhaps purchase contract with trust can be signed leaving final figure open for a few months. I realize this requires great confidence. Please do not mention C[amrose] this cable and do not reveal its content.’16 Churchill ignored him. However, Lord Camrose conceded that they could improve on the book bids. Before travelling to Montreal to sell the Canadian newspaper rights, he told LIFE to re-bid without the book rights and gave Reves the chance to put together a firm bid for them, so long as he beat the indicated price of $200,000.
Reves rushed down to Boston, where he lunched with Henry Laughlin and Paul Brooks, president and editor-in-chief of Houghton Mifflin. Reves had introduced a book*2 to the firm two years earlier in return for a share of the revenues and he wanted the same arrangement for bringing Churchill’s memoirs. By the time lunch was over, Laughlin and Brooks had agreed to fund a bid of $250,000, paying Reves 15 per cent retail royalties once their outlay was recouped, plus an immediate 25 per cent, rising to 50 per cent, on sales to book clubs.
Back in New York Camrose arranged a second meeting with LIFE on the afternoon of Wednesday 27 November. He warned them in advance that they would have to raise their price, which worked out at $1,050,000 once the book rights were stripped out. Roy Larsen, the company’s president, was ready to throw in an extra $100,000, but Longwell suggested asking The New York Times for more money too, so that they could together reach $1,250,000. Longwell later recalled:
I called Adler at his home that night and said that if he really wanted this with us, he would have to pick up $400,000. He agreed. Next afternoon Camrose was to see us at 5 o’clock, and the Herald Tribune called me to have a final talk. I suddenly realized that the other syndicates were being sort of hard pressed to get up to the amount LIFE and The Times were bidding, so I got back here about twenty minutes before we met with Camrose and told Larsen that we should be all right if we lowered our bid to $1,150,000, of which I expected The Times to pay $400,000.17
At the start of the meeting, Larsen spelled out the new price: ‘Lord Camrose nodded a couple of times and – none of us understood what the nod meant, and we were very excited when he said, “That’s fine,” and we got it.’18 Camrose’s cable to England that evening was short and to the point: ‘Please inform trust have closed with Henry for 1150. Book goes to Houghton Mifflin for 250. Total 1400.’19
He left New York the next evening, Thanksgiving Day, having raised an additional $110,000 from the Montreal Standard for the Canadian serial rights. ‘Going on board tonight and delighted at prospect,’ he told Churchill.20
The first press leak emerged within a fortnight. The North American Newspaper Alliance ran a story claiming that a $700,000 bid (its own) had failed. It predicted that Churchill would earn ‘more than $1 million and probably about $1.25 million’ from America alone, with more to come from the rest of the world.21
It took the American consortium a long time to find out what The Daily Telegraph and Cas
sell had paid for their rights: £75,000 and £40,000 respectively. On his return to Britain, Lord Camrose raised almost another £60,000 from Australia, South Africa and Ireland. After Reves had explained to him the complexities of selling to the less-familiar markets of continental Europe, Asia and South America, Lord Camrose asked him to name a price for purchasing the foreign language rights as a single package. Reves quoted £25,000 before testing the markets, but then returned with a price of £45,000, which Camrose pushed up to £47,500.22 It was still to prove a bargain.
By the time the trustees had ratified the package in January 1947, the worldwide sale of rights for Churchill’s memoirs had reached £550,000; it ended up at £600,000 or $2 ½ million. It was the world’s largest-ever non-fiction publishing deal.23 Just over half the money had come from America, but TIME-LIFE was content. Each volume of the memoirs would fill nearly ninety of LIFE’s editorial pages, Longwell calculated, equivalent to two whole issues, which would bring in $4 million of advertising revenue. Seen in that context, the magazine’s fee to Churchill of $150,000 for each volume seemed modest. ‘We always got credit for paying more than we really did,’ he told his successor.24
Churchill was happy, too. His trust would clear at least £375,000 over the five volumes, while he earned £175,000 as the author – and The Daily Telegraph was to lend him an extra £15,000 on signature without charging interest.25 Nevertheless, Reves told Houghton Mifflin in confidence that they had picked up the American book ‘under most favourable conditions’, judging from the prices the Europeans were bidding. Between them, Reves reported, French and Dutch publishers had paid him comfortably more than Houghton Mifflin had paid for the US rights, although the two European countries’ combined market was one-tenth of America’s size.26
