from Sir Roger Elliott
Sir, May I please respond to some of the points made in two letters you have published about the dispute between Mr Malcolm and OUP?
The plaintiff in his letter of 11th May gives, as might be expected, a biased view of the affair. Nothing is said about his own obsessive behaviour which led him secretly to record all his telephone conversations, or his attempts to take personal suit against Richard Charkin and to subpoena three people who are irrelevant to the case which had to be dismissed by the Master of the Court with costs to those concerned.
It also led him to spend five years trying to persuade OUP to publish his book, rather than seek an alternative publisher. But we did not think that Mr Malcolm's book had either the intellectual quality or the commercial potential necessary to justify publication by OUP.
It is a pity that Mr le Fanu was not present in Court or aware of any of the background to the case before he opined in his letter of 18th May that Mr Malcolm was treated harshly and unfairly.
The judge, for example, did not say that he would expect a print run to be specified in a contract but that the contract should contain a formula to determine this (which is normally at the publisher's discretion). OUP deals with several hundred satisfied authors each year, some of whom may even be members of the Society of Authors. It is surely in the interests of authors, as much as publishers, that contracts should be clearly set out in writing. I doubt if many authors would wish to be bound to oral arrangements which are likely to be full of uncertainties and liable to misinterpretation.
The judge's obvious sympathies lay with the plaintiff, who conducted his own case, and this led him to make remarks about OUP which are themselves otiose and unfair. But the fact of the matter is that Mr Lightman found that there was no contract between Mr Malcolm and OUP. Although the matter is now subject to appeal, I am confident that his decision will be upheld.
Yours truly,
Roger Elliott
Chief Executive,
Oxford University Press,
Walton Street, Oxford
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