A new stage in an author's feud with Oxford University Press has started - with philosopher Andrew Malcolm opening a bookshop.
Mr Malcolm, pictured above, was left with a £12,500 legal bill at the end of a six-year battle with OUP after the company declined to publish his book. Not satisfied with writing a 250-page book about the legal saga, he has now opened his own bookshop opposite Balliol College, on Broad Street, to sell it.
The window is filled with posters bitterly criticising the university over his treatment. Inside, the walls are covered with enlarged newspaper stories about the case, together with recent stories which have embarrassed the university. The shop, which Mr Malcolm has taken on a short-term lease, has just two books in stock: The Remedy, the account of the trial, and Making Names, the 200,000-word Platonic dialogue that the OUP declined to publish back in 1984.
He sued OUP for breach of contract, saying that they had given him a verbal agreement to publish. He lost in the High Court, which found he had a "strong moral, though not legal, commitment", then went to appeal. Later he returned to the High Court, unsuccessfully arguing that the university agreement not to publish derogatory remarks about his book had been breached.
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