RICHARD CHARKIN, the fast-talking 40-year-old who takes over next week as chief executive of Britain's biggest book publishing corporation, Octopus, was the central figure in two battles that rattled the silver in the senior common rooms of Oxford.
In the late 1970s, when the university press was heading for financial calamity, its boss Dr George Richardson (now Warden of Keble) brought in a London publishing wizard, Robin Denniston, to root out its cosy old donnish practices. The two men turned the company round. This year it has made a profit of about £12 million on a turnover of £120 million.
Charkin, who learned his craft under the ruthless Robert Maxwell at Pergamon, was one of the thrusting young editor/managers they promoted in their blitz on bumbledom. He master-minded the computerised second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published last year to world acclaim, at a time when scissors-and-paste was the prevailing technology among Oxford's lexicographers.
When Richardson and Denniston retired in 1988, Charkin was seen outside Oxford as the obvious successor to Richardson. But, despite Denniston's support, a group of the Delegates (the governing body of dons) were determined to have someone less abrasive, astonishing everyone by choosing Oxford's 59-year-old Professor of Physics, Sir Roger Elliott, to run the business.
Charkin was shattered. One factor in his exclusion is said to have been his spat with Margaret Drabble, who had edited the best-selling Oxford Companion to English Literature. He wanted to cannibalise it in several paperback volumes without Drabble's co-operation. There was a furious behind-the-scenes row. It required intensive lobbying of the Delegates before Drabble prevailed. She has since been brought in to collaborate on the paperback spin-offs.
"Richard has great ability, a first-rate mind and a tremendous high," says a senior publishing figure. "But he doesn't understand when to be macho and when not to be. Octopus is a deeply divided company both at senior and subordinate levels. The move to Michelin House (the firm's headquarters in the Fulham Road) has not been a happy one. Richard needs to recognise that successful publishing depends on creative people - editors as well as authors."