[original page numbering (University Gazette), forwards]

[page 6]

The Proctors for the year were Mr. B. E. F. Fender and Dr. R. P. Martineau; the Assessor was Dr. H. Shukman.

Dr. J. H. S. Thompson died on 17 June 1975; he had served the Press as a Delegate from 1953 and as Chairman of Finance Committee from 1960. Professor R. J. Elliott was appointed Chairman of Finance Committee on 1 July 1975. Professor N. Davis took office as Delegate on 1 October 1975 and Professor M. F. Atiyah on 1 January 1976. Dame Helen Gardner retired on 30 September 1975.

General

The Press needs to earn a trading surplus sufficient to sustain the scholarly and educational publishing which it exists to undertake. During the financial year 1974-5 it failed to do this; its operations were maintained but only through recourse to borrowing and the liquidation of reserves. The surplus earned, although it would have been considered adequate by the standards of earlier years, fell short of what was needed to replace our stock of books at a time when the cost of doing so had risen to an unprecedented extent.

During the financial year 1975-6 the pre-tax trading surplus excluding exceptional items amounted to £3.96 m. The exceptional items equal to £1.39 m. are largely attributable to a rise in the value of overseas assets expressed in sterling. This increase in sterling value resulted from the depreciation of the pound relative to other currencies during the period; it represents no real increase in assets and provides no additional disposable funds whatever. The accounts show for the financial year 1974-5 a surplus of £2.6 m. but this figure includes an inventory adjustment amounting to £0.4 m. which resulted from a change in the method of stock valuation used in the New York office. Thus it is proper to compare figures of [page 7] £3.96 m. for last year with £2.2 m. for the year previous. In both these years the cash available to the Press was increased by virtue of the fact that it was permitted to defer payment of the greater part of the tax to which its trading surplus was liable; this entitlement was available to all businesses in the United Kingdom to the extent that the value of their investment in stocks had risen.

The increase in the trading surplus of the Press as a whole was the result of improved results from publishing and printing; the Wolvercote Mill, having made a good profit in 1974-5, made a substantial loss in 1975-6. Publishing results improved both in the United Kingdom and in New York; the overseas offices, taken as a whole, had an excellent year.

Despite the improvement, it cannot be said that a trading surplus of the order earned last year is necessarily adequate for the purposes of the Press; we cannot predict the conditions, such as future inflation rates and tax policies, that affect cash needs. Our present circumstances, moreover, are very abnormal in that the transfer to Oxford of the former London publishing business necessitates heavy expenditure on new building in Oxford, in relocation grants, and related payments. It is now clear that the sale of the leasehold of our London office, Ely House, will fetch a sum much less than that expected before the fall in London property values and much less than that which would offset the costs associated with the move. During the last financial year, moreover, expenditure on stock was very strictly controlled; we are likely in the future to have to find more money to build up our stock and to buy new equipment. For these reasons the Press cannot yet be said to be earning a surplus sufficient to meet all its likely needs and to restore its financial reserves; nevertheless there has been a significant improvement.

The causes of the improvement are several. Those affecting the Printing Division, the International Division, and New York are discussed below. The improvement in the United Kingdom publishing results was the result partly of less unfavourable external circumstances and partly of policy measures. During 1974-5 costs rose dramatically and we were unable to increase prices in like measure. During 1975-6, costs rose less steeply and we were permitted to raise our prices so as to recoup the increase. In the former year we were often unable to supply books in demand; in the latter, we were [page 8] generally able to do so and to shorten the time needed to meet an order. This was accomplished without a substantial increase in the stock of books carried; whereas the Press's total inventories rose by 15 per cent, its sales rose by 30 per cent. In order to contain production expenditure and thus restore liquidity, the Press was regrettably obliged to defer the publication of some titles and to publish fewer books during the year than had earlier been planned. Despite this the Academic Division published more titles than ever before; deferment was necessary because of the very large number of manuscripts that were received ready for publication.

During the last year much of the attention of the management of the Press was perforce directed to reducing the cash drain, to reallocating work to fit with the new organization, and to planning the new building and the move from London. This last concern is still with us. A substantial number of the London staff has chosen not to move to Oxford and new staff will have to be recruited to replace them. The move from London was necessary if the full benefits of reorganization were to be realized; inevitably, however, there has been a cost in human terms, in money, in disruption, and in extra demands on many people already heavily engaged. The year was therefore difficult but progress was made both in implementing the reorganization decided upon by the Delegates three years ago and in improving the liquidity position; there was progress, that is to say, in establishing the conditions for maintaining and developing the Press's publishing programmes.

Academic Division

A considerable and welcome increase in sales, by value and to a less extent by volume, took place during the year. Sales of trade reference books were, however, mainly responsible: the grievous and prolonged effects of the three-day week were at last overcome and stocks of all the principal dictionaries were in consequence once more steadily available. The heavy investment necessary to ensure this and to finance publication of the sixth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary in the current year, made cash flow a continuing problem, exacerbated by a heavy load of long-standing commitments, by the effects on production and other charges of severe inflation, and by government restrictions on the repricing of the back [page 9] list. Economies in every phase of publishing had to be grimly pursued. In the more strictly academic field the publication of some new books had to be deferred and more stringent financial criteria had to be brought to bear on what books could be kept in print, although the major factor in decisions remained importance for scholarship. The market itself continued to be sluggish and the pricing of new books and old books in such a way as to reflect the steadily growing costs of production and distribution without intimidating the institutional purchasers or altogether extinguishing the individual buyer presented an obstinate and almost insoluble problem.

The old Clarendon Press Publishing Department, now that reorganization is virtually complete, survives fitfully in the locution of a few tenaciously tridentine seniors and, more permanently, in the imprint of the Academic Division, an appellation now firmly established at least internally in the Press as a whole. A welcome recruit is Mr. J. F. Bell from the General Division who has taken over responsibility for Art History and English Language and Literature from Mr. J. H. Stallworthy and thus freed him for the wider responsibilities of Deputy Academic Publisher.

In the capable hands of Mr. R. D. P. Charkin, the department known as Oxford Medical Publications has continued to flourish along the lines so successfully established by his predecessor Dr. J. C. Gregory. It has been integrated as part of the Science Department in such a way as to ensure both independence and co-operation. A close liaison with the corresponding department in the New York Business is being happily sustained.

In the course of the year the Academic Division published 305 books, of which 51 were published on commission and 14 were official university publications and lectures.

The Science Department published 94 books, of which 17 were Oxford Medical Publications. Among those that might be especially noted from the academic science list are Quantum Gravity by C. J. Isham, R. Penrose, and D. W. Sciama in the physical sciences and, in the biological sciences, Electric Current Flow in Excitable Cells by J. J. B. Jack, D. Noble, and R. W. Tsien. Dr. Denis Noble also contributed Initiation of the Heartbeat to the college list which contained, among its fifty-six titles, Biological Membranes edited by D. S. Parsons, the fourth edition of Structural Inorganic Chemistry by A. F. [page 10] Wells, and the second edition of J. Z. Young's The Life of Mammals. In the medical list the fourteenth edition of Cunningham's Manual of Practical Anatomy by G. J. Romanes gave that renowned work a new juvenescence which should ensure that its approaching hundredth anniversary finds it vigorously flourishing; and A. E. Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups shows every sign of a sturdy and distinguished life to come.

Publications of note in the Academic Division list were numerous. There was wide acclaim for the first volume of Mr. Harry Carter's History of the Oxford University Press. There were some distinguished contributions to medieval history: King, Parliament, and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 by Dr. G. L. Harriss; The Good Parliament by Dr. George Holmes; and The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages, in which Professor Rodney Hilton brought together his Ford Lectures and some related papers. From a long list of publications in later English history it may be enough to cite Dr. Gareth Bennett's The Tory Crisis in Church and State 1688-1730. In The House of Lords and the Labour Government 1964-70 Dr. Janet P. Morgan examines the role of the Upper House in recent times; and the autobiography of Sir John Masterman, On the Chariot Wheel, gives us a private view of an Oxford and an England over a long lifetime spent in the stoic contemplation of accelerating change. The History of East Africa was brought to a conclusion with Volume III (1945-1963), edited by Professor D. M. Low and Miss Alison Smith.

Publication in philosophy has been vigorous. The first volume of the Clarendon Locke, Professor P. H. Nidditch's edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, established an authoritative text. Professor M. J. Oakeshott's On Human Conduct returned with new zest to some abiding themes and it is much to be regretted that Karl Marx's Philosophy of Man by the late John Plamenatz will be the last book we shall have from that distinguished scholar. But he will have many successors and the interdependence of the generations may be signalled by the mention of the paperback edition of Dr. Peter Hacker's Insight and Illusion which takes Wittgenstein's metaphysics of experience for its theme.

The Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith was inaugurated with his Inquiry into the Nature [page 11] and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Professor R. H. Campbell, Mr. A. S. Skinner, and Professor W. B. Todd, and happily appearing in the bicentenary year of its original publication.

In the field of English Professor Eric Dobson's The Origins of 'Ancrene Wisse' was the fruit of many years' work on the text and background of an important body of Early Middle English prose; William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life by Professor S. Schoenbaum combined reproductions of the surviving documents relating to Shakespeare's life with a linking narrative; Mrs. Marilyn Butler's Jane Austen and the War of Ideas set the novelist's work against the intellectual background of her time; Dr. Valentine Cunningham's Everywhere Spoken Against was a penetrating study of how Victorian fiction represented religious non-conformity; and in Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworth's 'Lyrical Ballads' (1798) Dr. Mary Jacobus explores the context and importance of this first bold assertion of Wordsworth's literary identity.

A notable contribution in the classical field was Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics by Mrs. Miriam Griffin, and publication of the Oxford Latin Dictionary passed its half-way mark with Fascicle V. A new edition of the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary was published; the great battery of Oxford reference books was reinforced by Mr. Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts; and the Compact Edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, by means of micrographic reproduction, made the complete text of all twenty-eight volumes of the parent work available in two volumes, at one-fifth of its price and in one-twelfth of its space.

The staff of the Academic Division on 31 March 1976 was 94.

General Division

The General Division completed its first year under the new organization. The ability to match published prices with production costs after the restraints of 1974 led to a very significant improvement in results, as forecast in the last report. Because of inflation, however, it was necessary to reduce the number of books published: excluding imported books, Bible bindings, and items of sheet music, 128 new books were published in the financial year. [page 12]

Outstanding publications were: The Oxford Companion to Sports and Games, edited by John Arlott; Arthur Marder's Operation 'Menace': The Dakar Expedition and the Dudley North Aftair, G. J. Marcus's Heart of Oak: A Survey of British Sea Power in the Georgian Era; Richard Cobb's Paris and its Provinces; Charles Cruickshank's official history, The German Occupation of the Channel Islands, published for the Imperial War Museum; Dan Davin's recollections of seven literary friends, Closing Times; and Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, in both a handsome boxed edition and Oxford Paperbacks. Christopher Fry's translation of Cyrano de Bergerac was published to coincide with its production at the Chichester Festival Theatre. New work from several Oxford poets appeared - Edward Brathwaite, Peter Porter, Derek Mahon, Peter Scupham, and Hugo Williams; and a new series of books on chess was launched. Important Music Department publications included Volume 5 of the New Oxford History of Music - Opera and Church Music 1630-1750; a handsome two-volume edition of the score of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov; and a selection of the best of the English folk songs collected by Cecil Sharp, with the title The Crystal Spring, edited by Maud Karpeles.

Victor Ambrus was awarded the Kate Greenaway medal for children's book illustration for two picture-books: Mishka and Horses in Battle; and the 'Other Award' given by the Children's Rights Workshop went to Bernard Ashley's The Trouble with Donovan Croft, a novel for ten- to twelve-year-olds.

Changes in senior personnel include the transfer of Mr. John Bell, for many years in charge of the general list in London, to the Academic Division. Mr. Jon Stallworthy was appointed general editor on an acting basis. Mr. Alan Frank, after a long and distinguished career as head of the Music Department, retired and was replaced by W. Anthony Mulgan, dealing with administration and music books, and Mr. Christopher Morris, dealing with sheet music publications, as joint heads of the department.

During the current year three of the five departments of the General Division, General Editorial, Children's Books, and Paperbacks, will transfer to Oxford. The disruption of the move will inevitably reduce activity until the departments are [page 13] re-established in Oxford. The Music and Bible Departments will remain in central London and Neasden respectively.

The total staff in the General Division was 65, of which 34 worked for the Music Department.

Educational Division

It was a peculiarly difficult year. The two halves of the Division remained physically separated in Oxford and London, and much managerial time was spent in overcoming the disadvantages of this split, and in planning the move of staff to Oxford which is due to be completed in November 1976. The acute problems created by unprecedented national inflation were also very painful at the time, and caused an atmosphere of crisis which was testing for the morale of all staff. In January there was a change in top management: W. P. J. Chester reached retiring age and was succeeded as Educational Publisher by Mr. R. E. Brammah, formerly Regional Manager of the East Asian Branch.

In the circumstances, the overriding priority was to reduce cash flow by trimming investment in both new books and reprints. This was done, and although it had painful effects on some books of quality appealing to a minority of readers, it had become economically necessary that the back list should be smaller. The crisis accelerated our policy of publishing fewer books better researched and selling in larger quantities, and of putting more muscle behind our sales effort.

The financial results were encouraging. In the Education Department we increased the number of copies sold by 16 per cent, and turnover and surplus both increased, even after discounting the effects of inflation. In the English Language Teaching Department fewer copies were sold, but turnover and surplus increased greatly, so that for the Division as a whole there was a marked improvement in financial health.

Notable publications during the year included two secondary science textbooks, Biology: A Modern Introduction, by Mr. B. S. Beckett, and Core Chemistry by Messrs. D. Garvie, J. Reid, and Mrs. A. Robertson; Mathematics for Life by Messrs. N. Moore and A. Williams; Storyhouse (English literature for primary and middle schools), by Messrs. D. Jackson and D. Pepper; and The Oxford Book of Trees, illustrated by Miss B. E. Nicholson, with text by Professor A. R. Clapham. On the English Language Teaching side, it [page 14] was mainly a year of consolidation, with successful development of the Access to English course and the new edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. But a range of books was successfully published to meet the demands of the new Cambridge Examination of Proficiency in English and First Certificate in English. The Education Department published 63 new titles, plus 13 tapes and slides, and the English Language Teaching Department 38 titles during the course of the year. The total staff of the Division was 94.

International Division

Overseas results were excellent. Sales, surplus, and return on capital employed all improved over the preceding year.

Among all the overseas offices Nigeria had the most outstanding year; its sales more than doubled. Further dramatic increases are expected in the coming year as a result of universal primary education. Australia and Canada among the larger branches also made good progress and continued to provide large markets for books, especially dictionaries, originating in the United Kingdom. Among the smaller branches, New Zealand and South Africa showed substantial improvement and only Ethiopia in exceptionally adverse circumstances showed a large decline in turnover.

Our office in Argentina was closed owing to impossible trading conditions; but plans were laid for the opening of a new regional office in the Middle East, due to open in October 1976 in Cairo.

India has had a much better year, improving sales and profits, while reducing the effective tax rate through more local publishing and printing.

Price resistance to United Kingdom books overseas was experienced, especially in certain categories such as children's books, but decline in the value of sterling has more recently acted to offset this effect.

The number of staff employed in the United Kingdom at 31 March was 15, and in the branches 748, making a total of 763.

The New York Business

The fiscal year 1976 was, except in one respect, the most successful for a considerable time. Dollar sales were up, and [page 15] surplus, both in terms of return on sales and on equity, exceeded targets. The major contributing reason was a very tight control of operating expenses. The depressing aspect was that, except for academic imported books, volume sales declined.

Bible sales declined both in dollars and volume but still remained almost a quarter of the business. A disturbing factor here is the impact new copyright legislation may have on the 1917 version of the Scofield Bible. The religious books publishing programme has been resuscitated under a new editor and shows promise, but is still in its early days.

The Trade Books Department, without anything to compare with Morison: The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages in the previous year, had a number of really successful books both American and imported. Fussell: The Great War and Modern Memory won a National Book Award; Des Pres: The Survivor and Auerbach: Unequal Justice got considerable review and media attention and sold excellently. Among imported books, The Oxford Companion to Sports and Games, Toynbee: Mankind and Mother Earth, and Cox: The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government all made substantial contributions.

College sales were well up on the previous year. Sherman: Biology was the single most successful new title and new editions of Elkind: Children and Adolescents and Hsu: The Rise of Modern China showed substantial sales.

Medical sales for the first time in a number of years showed a down-turn primarily due to a cyclical decline in the number of books published. This trend should be reversed in 1977.

The English Language Teaching programme, previously only a marketing organization, got off the ground with the appointment of an editor to produce American English books not only for the United States English as a Second Language market but, it is hoped, also for Central and South America and Japan.

Although not back to the level of previous years, sales of scholarly imports improved markedly and, primarily due to the decline in the value of the pound, resistance to United Kingdom prices has diminished. There continued to be increasing sales of music books published by the Press in London. [page 16]

Export sales have continued to increase except, unfortunately, to the United Kingdom, where it seems the decline in the value of the pound may be causing resistance to American prices.

Further changes have been made in the organization of the Marketing Division to improve market research and sales promotion.

The distribution departments continue to function well and are highly regarded by the book trade.

The staff, down from 276 in 1975 to 271, showed remarkable co-operation in assisting to control operating expenses by accepting salary increases well below the rate of inflation. This was a major factor in turning an only moderate 1975 into a successful 1976.

Printing Division

This financial year was marked by an erratic flow of work and an alarming increase in the demand for cash. During the first six months the main departments, with the exception of the composing rooms, were kept fairly busy, and at times they had great difficulty in meeting all the demands being made upon them. But in the autumn, as the publishing world continued to grapple with its own problems of cash flow, we suffered an unpredicted cut-back in the orders for reprints and cased bindings. Fortunately it coincided with a considerable increase in demand from overseas. This work was not of a kind to keep all departments continuously employed, but it did go a long way towards providing a better result at the year's end than the uncertainties of midsummer had led us to forecast. The Bindery continued to suffer from the shortage of cased bindings, and other groups were under-employed for varying periods. In these conditions we had to take a cautious view of recruitment: at the end of the year the total strength of the Division was 730, a drop of 36 on the previous year. Overtime working was also severely curtailed.

Several changes were made to the factory layout. The top floor of the North Wing, which had housed the Oriental 'ship [?] and the Reading Department for many years, was transferred to the publishing divisions. The Machine Folding Section was removed from the Bindery basement to a lighter and more spacious room on the main floor. To make room for it, the [page 17] small letterpress machines were moved into the most recent extension to the new buildings, completed in May.

The extension also allowed us to organize a self-contained jobbing bindery for the handling of small or special orders which had until then been dealt with in the main department. A successful start was also made in selling the spare capacity of this new section to other firms in the district.

The Bindery was the main beneficiary of the capital invested during the year. A machine was installed to reduce the cost of binding medium- and short-run editions; and another group of machines was installed to update the equipment used for longer runs of cased books.

Mr. Ian Lyster was appointed Production Services Director in November. With his arrival Mr. James Campling, Production Director, was redesignated Works Director, and certain duties were reallocated in consequence. In June Mr. Hugh Pitman was appointed Assistant Personnel Manager, with particular responsibility for training.

Towards the end of the previous financial year a series of training seminars for all managers and supervisors had been arranged with the help of the Industrial Society. These concluded with a week-end seminar held at a Banbury hotel in April 1975. Further follow-up meetings continue to be held from time to time in Oxford.

Wolvercote Paper Mill

Operations in 1975-6 felt the full force of the paper cycle. Immediately after record earnings in 1974-5, the Mill suffered its largest loss. This experience was broadly typical of the industry as a whole, for 1975-6 was certainly the worst year for paper-makers in decades.

The first signs of weakness in demand for industrial and other grades appeared in late 1974. By early 1975 the order rate was sharply lower, especially for plain papers. This reflected recession in the British and other economies, compounded by an unusually high carry-over of stocks held by users who had made large commitments in the previous period. The level of new orders, both for paper and for the converting operation, remained depressed throughout 1975 and into 1976, as users tried to redress liquidity by de-stocking. Not only was sales volume affected, but the combination of sluggish [page 18] demand and ever-rising unit costs severely eroded margins. That was intensified by the decline in the value of the pound relative to other currencies by some 20 per cent. The higher sterling cost of wood pulp, purchased primarily from hard-currency foreign suppliers, could not be wholly passed on in a weak market.

Because of government policy, average earnings over the cycle of demand were reduced; Price Commission control had held margins and earnings below their 'natural' level in 1974, but nothing was done to limit their decline in a depressed market in 1975.

The year was very trying for all at Wolvercote, as indeed for the whole industry.

While efforts were sustained to broaden the customer-base, and to develop and improve products and processes to that end, management was inevitably concerned chiefly with cost-savings and economies wherever possible. Short-time working was necessary for much of the year and, even with expenses strictly controlled, the number employed had to be reduced in March 1976. Fortunately, redundancies were limited in number, and could be implemented on a voluntary basis. [page 19]

We have audited the Accounts of the Oxford University Press for the year ended 31 March 1976 and have submitted our Audit Report to the Delegates. In our opinion these accounts give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Press at 31 March 1976 and of the profit for the year ended on that date.

(Signed) COOPERS & LYBRAND
Chartered Accountants

Introductory Note

The figures for turnover in the Consolidated Profit and Loss Account again exclude inter-departmental and inter-business sales. No figure for profit as a ratio of capital employed is given in respect of the individual businesses, as the Delegates believe that this can be misleading.

The Delegates wish to observe,

(a) In regard to the Consolidated Balance Sheet, that the investment and cash position is substantially stronger at 31 March than at other times of the year;

(b) in regard to the Consolidated Profit and Loss Account for the year, that the 'Exceptional Items' primarily relate to the translation of balance sheets of overseas operations into sterling at exchange rates which reflect the decline of the pound on world markets. Such 'gains' are primarily statistical and do not reflect a genuine increase in the international value of Press assets, or real operational earnings in the year. [page 20]

Note A: The valuation of certain overseas inventories has been restated, with the approval of the Auditor, on a basis more directly comparable with that employed in the U.K. The difference of £385(000) at 31.3.75 has been included in pretax profit for the year ended on that date, and in Accumulated Fund and Reserves.

Note B: Including United Kingdom corporation tax, payment of which is deferred as the result of a claim for stock appreciation relief until some future date not at present determinable. [page 21]

Note 1: Profit for 1976 includes 55 being the share of pretax profit attributable to Associated Companies (1975: 124). For 1975, the profit also includes 385 representing restatement of certain overseas inventories (see Note B to Consolidated Balance Sheet).

Note 2: Exceptional items represent primarily foreign exchange gains arising from the conversion of overseas assets and liabilities to sterling at the rates of exchange ruling at the Balance Sheet date.

Note 3: Restated: see Note 1.

Note 4: Profit is before tax and Exceptional Items.

Note 5: The contribution of the two manufacturing departments to the consolidated profit before tax was: