My Formative Years as a Publisher

An extract from my book, Fulfilment and Betrayal 1975-1995:

In March 1982 Hugo Williams, the well-known poet, wrote a lengthy profile of me in Time Out, after interviewing me at Namara House. The article appeared with a grim-looking but forceful picture of myself, seated with a cane in my hand, beneath which, in bold lettering, was the title, ‘The Smile on the Face of the Tiger’. It was eye-catching, to say the least, and given the rather forbidding aspect of the picture, quite dramatic.

The article itself started off well enough and had the poetic turn of phrase to be expected from its author. As a prelude it had the following paragraph:

‘After a long and difficult journey, the tigress arrives in Tiger Heaven. From the build-up of her relationship with Eelie the dog and Harriet the leopardess, through her early attempts at eating a porcupine and her surprise encounter with a bear to her first kill of a Sambar fawn, the reader will be spellbound…’ So goes the blurb of Tara, A Tigress, one of the tiger books published by the Palestinian entrepreneur, Naim Attallah. It sounds like Attallah’s own story, with Eelie the dog played by David Frost, Harriet the leopardess played by Mayfair jeweller John Asprey, the porcupine by Times Newspapers and the bear by Lord Grade. The Sambar fawn is clearly Anne Smith, the unfortunate editor of the Literary Review, whose sacking last year won Attallah a marzipan pig from Women in Publishing for ‘outstanding services to sexism’.

From that point on the article lost its way, relying on fantasy and recycled gossip rather than properly researched facts. I might have contemplated buying The Times newspaper and supplements when they were for sale, as the article speculated, but would never have suggested removing John Gross, the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, to replace him with Anne Smith. The notion was preposterous beyond the realms of fantasy; I happened to be a great admirer of John.

Far more than by this sort of nonsense, however, I was exercised by a repetition of the old canard that I had swamped the Literary Review with pro-Arab propaganda. The article had its interesting side, but this outrageously untrue and easily disproved assertion demeaned it as a whole.

There were other inaccuracies relating to the dispute with Anne Smith and the supposed ‘sacking’ of my close friend Stephanie Dowrick from The Women’s Press. These finally robbed the piece of any charm and authenticity it might have possessed and provoked me into contemplating legal proceedings against Time Out.

It was still a dilemma for me, since I liked Hugo Williams for his wit and nerve, but I could not let these grave accusations go by. Fortunately common sense prevailed and eventually Time Out printed an apology detailing the main inaccuracies. Stephanie was also naturally incensed and the editor of Time Out reproduced in full the letter she wrote from Australia:

There was much to object to in your article about Naim Attallah (TO 604). However, I will narrow my complaints to what directly concerns myself. Not only was I not dismissed as managing director of The Women’s Press by Naim Attallah but I have found him to be, in the five years of our business partnership, an intensely loyal man, capable of putting friendship ahead of all other considerations. When I discussed with him my current sabbatical his support was immediate and has been utterly consistent. Perhaps this kind of loyalty is difficult for your reporter to understand? For the record: Naim Attallah and I continue to own The Women’s Press jointly. I continue as a director of the company. Ros de Lanerolle is in a permanent position as managing director of The Women’s Press. I will return to The Women’s Press in the summer in a chiefly advisory capacity while I continue to write.

Over the years Hugo Williams and I have bumped into each other from time to time. He still remembers the unfortunate Time Out incident, but we have both mellowed and our meetings are friendly and warm. What on earth he had in his mind about me in the conclusion he gave his article, however, is still a mystery:

Attallah once nearly produced an £8 million biopic of King Abdulazzid al Saud [sic], Lawrence of Arabia’s old adversary. ‘It’s the most marvellous story,’ he told me. ‘Can you imagine anyone else in this century founding a nation with the sword?’ A tiger smiled at me over his shoulder. ‘Why yes, Naim. You.’

Some time during that summer I received a letter from Auberon Waugh. It was an invitation to a lunch he was hosting at the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho. The objective was to bring together the leading publishers in England to ask them to debate the merits of their respective imprints and provide fodder for a lengthy article Bron was writing for the Sunday Telegraph magazine. I declined the invitation. My feeling over Quartet’s position in the publishing hierarchy was that there was not so much an outright rejection as a tacit non-acceptance of our status as an integral part of their world. We were perhaps seen as being on the fringes of the industry, and I did not want to stir the pot before we were ready, convinced as I was that I would only be plunged into a situation not of my choosing. As it turned out, I could have been right.

Details of the lunch were given in the ‘Bent’s Notes’ column in the Bookseller of 7th August, which listed the publishers who were there: Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape, Lord Weidenfeld of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Christopher Maclehose of Collins, Alan Brooke of Michael Joseph, Matthew Evans of Faber & Faber, André Deutsch of André Deutsch, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson of Hamish Hamilton and John Murray of John Murray. Among those invited but who failed to turn up, the report concluded, was Naim Attallah of Quartet, who declined to join ‘a bunch of Zionists and left-wingers’. When I read this unwarranted distortion of the truth I was naturally furious and demanded that the Bookseller retract the statement. ‘Bent’s Notes’ of 21st August duly made a gentlemanly response:

I apologise. I referred to Naim Attallah of Quartet declining an invitation from Auberon Waugh to lunch with Tom Maschler, Lord Weidenfeld, Christopher Maclehose, Alan Brooke, Matthew Evans, André Deutsch, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson and John Murray. He had not, as I wrote in my column of 7th August, declined to join ‘a bunch of Zionists and left- wingers’ ‑ that was the paraphrase put on it at the lunch but not what Naim Attallah had said. He had, in fact, replied in these courteous terms: ‘My own view concerning publishing is alas not one that other publishers would share and I therefore feel inadequately placed to cope with established figures whose motivations rarely coincide with mine. Their world is one which I feel neither comfort in nor draw any comfort from.’ I apologise for any distress or embarrassment I may have caused him.

In the Sunday Telegraph article, which appeared later that year, Bron, whom I had not met up to this point, was very complimentary about Quartet, and me personally:

When Naim Attallah of Quartet started publishing six years ago, he gave the impression of being concerned by what he saw as the excessive Zionist influence in British publishing. But his list, which includes among its greater successes Nigel Dempster’s HRH Princess Margaret: A Life Unfulfilled, does not really support the idea of a holy crusade. There is a surprisingly pleasant and relaxed atmosphere at Quartet under such a dynamic man (Attallah is also the financial director of Asprey’s, the jewellers) but the list is unmistakably one of the more interesting around. Currently they are chiefly excited about the recent publication of Red Square, a faction novel by Edward Topol and Fridrikh Neznansky, about a supposed plot to topple Brezhnev.

The Sunday Telegraph magazine then proceeded to list our turnover as standing at one million four hundred thousand pounds, more than half that of John Murray, founded in 1768.

An indication of how Quartet’s profile was increasing in prominence came in the June issue of Publishing News, which reported on an idea from the Book Marketing Council for a new wheeze as part of its ‘Books are Fun’ campaign. Desmond Clarke, as perceptive as ever, observed how the image the man in the street had of the average publisher was of a boring old fart in baggy grey flannels. This he considered not entirely conducive to what the BMC described as a ‘book-buying situation’.

The first part of Desmond’s plan was the creation of an annual Oscars ceremony for publishers. Naturally the proceedings were to be chaired by someone as charismatic as Martyn Goff, Desmond himself or his brother Charles. Publishing News lost not a moment in putting forward its own inventions for prize categories alongside nominations for the 1982 ceremony:

• The Edward Victor Award for Services to Agents: Sphere/Pavilion for their £130,000 blockbuster Hello, Pontiff!
• The Thomas Maschler Award for Self-Promotion: The young lion McCrumb edged out by the old pro himself, Lord Longford.
• The Robert Maxwell Award for Services to Printers: Sphere/Pavilion for their lavishly produced Hello, Pontiff!
• The Au Bak Ling Award for the Encouragement of New Talent: Naim Attallah, who has worked so hard to bring stimulating new blood into Quartet.
• The Henry Pordes Award for Services to the Remainder Market: Sphere/Pavilion for their 500,000 copy extravaganza, Hello, Pontiff!

I was equally chuffed when, in July, Horace Bent of the Bookseller, with whom I had not always seen eye to eye, wrote:

Having nothing better to do I spent an evening last week poring over old copies of the Standard. In one of them I saw Naim Attallah described as ‘perhaps the only publisher in the world who compares the company he runs to a woman. Both, he says, are “dangerous, unpredictable, attractive”. Like an Italian sports car I lusted after in my youth.

The reason I was chuffed was because, even in a land of old farts, it is sometimes possible to come across a human specimen with the capacity to step out from the rest. The piece by Horace Bent, despite its tongue-in-cheek tone, was to me most reassuring.

A new book on Ibn Saud, The Desert Warrior & His Legacy by Michael Darlow and Barbara Bray, will be published by Quartet in the Spring of 2010.