Hardy: I did ring you yesterday, or whenever it was, about five minutes later than you asked, but your line was engaged.

Malcolm: Oh dear, the usual thing, yes.

Hardy: So I haven't been as negligent as it may seem.

Malcolm: Oh that's alright, I imagined you might be very busy after the meeting and all that.

Hardy: Anyway, prior to that I have of course been somewhat negligent in not having answered your letter of 24th March.

Malcolm: Yes, it was a month, I thought it was time I... your memory was jogged.

Hardy: The reason of course apart from general business is that it's a very difficult one this, difficult (a) to decide what to do or say and (b) having decided it, difficult to express it to you. So I'm just going to have a shot at telling you what's in our minds and see what you think.

Malcolm: You're going to have a shot now, on the phone?

Hardy: Yes, if that's alright with you.

Malcolm: Fine, shoot away. line 20

Hardy: Ermm... First of all we obviously - well I don't know if this is obvious - but we can't commit ourselves in advance to accepting the results of a further attempt to reorganise the book.

Malcolm: Uhuh.

Hardy: I don't know whether you need that commitment. I haven't just re-read your letter this moment - my secretary rang you rather faster than I thought, I was going to re-read your letter - but I don't know if you feel that you need that kind of commitment in order to have the psychological motivation to turn to it again?

Malcolm: Well I feel I need some commitment, yes. It's partly from experience of having... I mean I originally went through putting the whole thing into the form of a dialogue on the advice of a publisher that they would be interested when it was done.

Hardy: How frightful! You mean you first of all wrote it as a straight text?

Malcolm: It was originally ninety percent straightforward philosophical essays, and there were some dialogue parts that they caught up on and really liked, and they said redo it, and I spent five years redoing it, and I mean in the process a lot of other things have added to it, but I went back to the original publisher and of course the bloke I was dealing with wasn't there, da-de-da-de-da, and they just... The first mention that it was a dialogue, the woman philosophy editor said "Oh no, no, we couldn't handle it, dialogue is completely out of fashion", so I mean... line 40

Hardy: Who was the publisher?

page 2 (28)

Malcolm: That was Penguins.

Hardy: And who was the editor who left?

Malcolm: It was a bloke by the name of Mike Dover

Hardy: Do you know where he went to?

Malcolm: Yes, he's now in children's books or something.

Hardy: He hasn't gone to a similar slot with another publisher?

Malcolm: No. It was the same in fact... This was years ago, I had two really quite firm, as I thought, bits of interest from two different publishers. There was Allen & Unwin as well, and the bloke had moved from there too, and I was right back at square one again.

Hardy: Yes. Do you... The translation into dialogue, was that something you undertook reluctantly or something you ended up believing in?

Malcolm: Well, I certainly believe in it now. I was reluctant in a way...

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: ...but having got into it I think it's much stronger now from every point of view.

Hardy: You don't feel you were led up the garden path? line 60

Malcolm: Oh, I wouldn't have been led that far up, no, but I, obviously...

Hardy: Well...

Malcolm: That is why I am looking for some sort of commitment.

Hardy: Understandably, very understandably.

Malcolm: I mean apart from anything else you see, I wouldn't just hack it around, chop bits out and bung it back to you, it would be at least six months I think before I got it to what I wanted it to be. You know quite apart from cutting it down, I would want to have another go at it.

Hardy: Yes quite, and that will involve, include at least, putting it onto a machine?

Malcolm: Well I don't know actually. I've been experimenting with these word processors and I'm not quite sure about that.

Hardy: Why, you're not convinced that it would really make it that much easier to deal with have it on a machine?

Malcolm: No. It's funny you should mention that because I've just been through - its another sort of thing altogether - but a whole lot of a very complicated typesetting and I have been to this firm, these people I know who've got quite comprehensive word processing kit.

Hardy: Yup. line 80

Malcolm: Thinking of this idea that you can put it all onto a screen and shuffle it around and all the rest of it. In fact he says it's largely fictional that fantasy, that idea, and in fact they find it quicker by hand. They did the whole thing out, the copy out on computer and justified it and all that, but then when it came to arranging it, it was easier simply to get a scalpel and a tin of spraymount and start chopping it out on the drawing board, on bits of paper.

page 3 (29)

Hardy: Well I think that... well my view is that that shows that they're not using the...

Malcolm: Well that may be, that may be.

Hardy: I use word processors on a daily basis, for things like writing blurbs and writing letters and so on and it absolutely transforms my life, and I think if you use these things properly they're wonderful.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: It's slightly different of course using it for... and of course there are lots of authors that I deal with all the time who would not now dream of writing on anything other than a word processor.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: I mean it is a partly temperamental matter. Some people find themselves taking to word processors like a duck to water on day one, others find they go through a kind of a period of acclimatisation, but generally in the end... Even my wife, who is the most unmechanical being in the world is now writing a book on a word processor having sworn she'd never have anything to do with them. line 100

Malcolm: Yes. Oh I probably will. I suspect that...

(Tape ends. Side 2 continues. Conversation has moved on to the book's length)

Hardy: Therefore it has to be more expensive and you therefore weight the chances against it...

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy:...in a certain way, and, you know, maybe you want to do that anyway. Maybe you think it's important that it should be long rather than that it should be cheap?

Malcolm: Well I do in a way, and on that subject, increasing the length is not simply proportional to the price by any means is it? I mean presumably...

Hardy: No, double the length doesn't mean double the price if that's what you mean, no. A book like this... I mean I haven't really thought very hard about how one would publish it, although I think you have said that you thought it should be paperback straight away?

Malcolm: I haven't said that, no.

Hardy: You haven't said that, I'm sorry.

Malcolm: No, I don't know enough about the economics of it or the...

page 4 (30)

Hardy: It's normal when we publish a book of this kind, and indeed I'm sure this is the way in which, for example, Godel, Escher Bach was done and The Mind's Eye, is to publish it in hardback first. line 120

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: I mean one thing I could do is to have the book roughly cast off and see how long it would be. How many pages is it in your typescript, do you know?

Malcolm: Erm, it's about 450 is it, something like that.

Hardy: 450?

Malcolm: Something like that I think [in fact 435].

Hardy: Only that?

Malcolm: I think so. The thing is the pages vary a great deal.

Hardy: The pages are quite closely typed so I suggest that it's going to be more pages in print than it is in typescript, although not very many more pages, I mean it might be between five and ten per cent more, not vast.

Malcolm: Really? I'd worked out, we'd sort of estimated that it would be more like 400 pages in a largish format paperback.

Hardy: Really?

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: Well if you have calculated that, that may be... I mean normally typescript takes up a little bit more space than print because normally typescript is presented in full double spacing and yours, if I remember, is 1.5 spaced.

Malcolm: It varies a lot. line 140

Hardy: In varies a lot.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: Well I mean one thing I suggest we will do is have that (the cast-off) completed so that we know what we are talking about.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: If it's a 500 page book and published in hardback and given that I think we both agreed it's a somewhat speculative venture, even if we did it we probably wouldn't print a very large number to start with, so it's going to be, ermm, be between £15 and £20 pounds I guess at today's prices at that sort of level.

Malcolm: Good God!

Hardy: And then it could be much cheaper than that if it took off and went into paperback, but it couldn't be much cheaper than that without artificially taking a much lower profit margin, which I know is something that we wouldn't be interested to do.

Malcolm: Yup. I can immediately think of things that could be cut without spoiling it too much. I mean I think it would be more like 400 than 500 (pages).

Hardy: Right. Well I mean I think the first thing to say is that cutting is going to improve its chances, so long of course as you don't feel that the cutting is damaging its essential characteristics. line 160

page 5 (31)

Malcolm: Right.

Hardy: So that much is said in advance and I think we've already mentioned various passages which the reader found too long...

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy:...and I can see what he means.

Malcolm: Yes. Incidentally, was your reader a... what was his background, was he a scientific type?

Hardy: A philosopher.

Malcolm: A philosopher rather than a scientist?

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: Uhuh.

Hardy: Yes, but I mean, er, he's ermm... Well I don't see why I shouldn't tell you who he is, he's Alan Ryan, who is a delegate, which is a key point as well. Do you know about the delegates?

Malcolm: No I don't.

Hardy: Well, OUP, being a university press, has a board of dons called delegates who have to approve everything that is published.

Malcolm: Oh really?

Hardy: In fact I work here for a department called the General Books Department which is far freer from delegatorial control than any other part of the Press. line 180

Malcolm: The Thought Police.

Hardy: Yes, well, it isn't quite like that, erm, it may sound like that, erm... The press is a Department of the University and we are supposed to be primarily engaged in publishing scholarly works et cetera et cetera but we have a General Books Department and we do a lot of general publishing as well. Anyway, academic editors have to submit proposals for approval by the delegates before they sign them up. We report our decisions to the delegates on the whole, [Hardy's emphasis] but, erm, when we think that a book may be controversial in some way or another, maybe it's a... I mean we do get into the thought police bit when we publish very political books sometimes; we published a book a couple of years ago, you may have even seen it called London After the Bomb which was a...

Malcolm: Oh yes, yup.

Hardy: That was my book, that was a swingeing attack on the Home Office presentation of what to do after nuclear attack.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: In cases like that, one takes care to clear the delegates beforehand because, you know, if they have something reported to them which they think is dubious, they will want to ask questions.

Malcolm: Yes, I see.

Hardy: That's why, as I say, it's important that Alan Ryan is a delegate because he has read it and he likes it very much, basically, which is good. line 200

page 6 (32)

Malcolm: Really? And he's a...

Hardy: That, as it were gets it basically over that hurdle, although he too, I mean he thinks he may have some difficulty persuading the delegates that we would like to back it, so...

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: That does that connection. The other thing is, I don't know if you know who he is or if you know anything about him, but he is one of the least stuffy delegates that there is, which is why I asked him to read it and, er, I think... He's a political philosopher rather than a straight philosopher. He's a tutor in politics at New College.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: And he's very... He writes frequently for New Society and magazines like The Listener and he's generally culturally aware and I don't think he's in the least likely to be blinkered about the science because he's a philosopher, that's what I'm trying to convey.

Malcolm: Yes, yes.

Hardy: So if you should say this is the philosopher therefore he doesn't like the scientific bits therefore his opinion of the scientific bits is to be dismissed, I don't think that's true at all. line 220

Malcolm: Yup, sure.

Hardy: Anyway, I mean, you know, I'll leave you to think about that. I mean I haven't myself finished reading a book yet, I'm about half-way through so, erm, this is why I hadn't written to you, because I wanted to read it, but it's a question of finding the time.

Malcolm: Oh I see, yes.

Hardy: Therefore I'm not in a position to say whether or not I agree with him about the play, you see, and that is what I was really wanting to find out about.

Malcolm: Ah, yup.

Hardy: So I shall go on and do that.

Malcolm: What is your background if I may ask, are you scientifically based?

Hardy: I read PPP at Oxford, which is psychology and philosophy, so I am very sympathetic to science. In fact I wanted to be a scientist when I was a schoolboy but, er, but suffered from a parent who wouldn't allow it, so ended up doing classical mods and psychology and philosophy here. So I'm basically a philosopher here too, I have a doctorate in philosophy. line 240

Malcolm: Mm. Because the book is aimed in the end at ordinary people, I suppose... I mean everyone has a scientific education and it's getting younger and younger, in the sense that small children now are taught atomic theory in primary school, that kind of thing... So in a way it's aimed at everyone, but of course ultimately it's aimed at the propagators of that, if you know what I mean.

page 7 (33)

Hardy: Yup. Yes, I can see that.

Malcolm: To me the whole thing is a kind of process of de-education, the whole thing is an exercise in dis-education.

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: And given that nowadays more or less everybody has a scientific education of some sort, its market is potentially enormous in that sense.

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: If you're only half-way you won't quite have got to that.

Hardy: No, I mean that is the problem. I don't think I can really have a personal opinion about it until I've got to the end.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: Right. Anyway...

Malcolm: Well all I can say is that... The play at the moment, its, it's... The ideas are there, I mean the whole thing, again, is very... I find it endlessly fruitful. I mean it needs to be improved, but if you can make allowances for that, the basic idea of it is there, the vision is there. line 260

Hardy: Yes, yes.

Malcolm: It's just to me the... I can't say because I think it's extremely important, but then, I would do.

Hardy: Well, I've just been re-reading your letter, which I've now got to the end of. I think the position is really this: that Alan is sympathetic towards the book and would like to be able to recommend its publication to the delegates wholeheartedly. He wouldn't feel able to do that until he saw the result of the final rewrite which should if possible involve quite substantial cutting if you feel that that can be done.

Malcolm: Y-yes.

Hardy: I feel the same. I mean, I'm temperamentally inclined to be a bit of an iconoclast and sound sympathetic to the venture, but I too feel that there's a certain amount of work to be done, so I mean we both are sympathetic and want to encourage you to go ahead and do it, but we feel that the gap between how it is now and how it needs to be is sufficiently large that we couldn't say absolutely outright we would publish whatever you produced by way of a rewritten version, because it might be that you're going in the wrong direction. line 280

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: You know, you might produce something which seems to us either no better, or indeed worse, we just can't tell. The only kind of compromise I can think of is that you do what you mentioned here in the letter and actually give us a little bit more chapter-and-verse about how you would adjust it and then perhaps we could erm... That is to say, you do the first round of thinking about the reorganisation or the cutting or whatever it may be, and let us know the result. We then might see a way to being a bit more committed, but just at the moment that's about it really.

page 8 (34)

Malcolm: Mm, yup. I thought about that and then I thought again that in fact coming to do that, firstly I'd have to get immersed in the whole thing again...

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: And if I got immersed in the whole thing again, I might as well do it, the rewriting.

Hardy: Yes, you've either got to do it or not do it, you can't half do it you mean, yup.

Malcolm: Yes. line 300

Hardy: Or the other thing you could do, and I mean I think this perhaps is a less painful course for you, is to bear with me until I have read it.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: And then we'll talk again if I feel encouraged by a reading of the whole thing, and then, you know, I might be able to persuade Alan to join me in taking a more constructive line.

Malcolm: Oh yes, if you're still reading it... Obviously it's a good thing to wait for your reaction.

Hardy: I mean I know I've taken an unconscionably long time to read it. I'm afraid that life in a publishing house, as you have probably discovered before from other people, is just so hectic that time for reading is very limited...

Malcolm: Sure. One thing I think perhaps I would contemplate doing, especially after my recent experiences with word processors - the business of going on to a word processor and doing that is for me, given my typing and everything else, would be a major expense and terribly time-consuming.

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: Perhaps I can try a kind of scissors-and- glue editing exercise. I could do some of the editing I'm talking about without getting too involved and without putting it all onto a word processor, just rearranging pages and retyping some of it, that sort of thing. line 320

Hardy: Yup, good.

Malcolm: I mean maybe I could do that sort of an exercise, er, without a commitment.

Hardy: Well...

Malcolm: But obviously, you know, to sit down for six months and get it all onto a computer and all that...

Hardy: That's different I can see. Well I mean why not wait to do anything until... I mean having had this conversation I will be that much more motivated to make it a priority and in what spare time I have try and read it over in the next two or three weeks and see if I can... You know I'd like to read it very quickly anyway and I may have to start at the beginning again because there's been a gap and one loses the sense of the structure as a whole.

Malcolm: Yes. Well you have got all those extra bits that you can use, the introduction et cetera. Once you've read it you can go back through the page-by-page guide to find out where you are.

Hardy: Yes quite.

page 9 (35)

Malcolm: Although obviously on the second reading you'd start to get things you probably hadn't got on the first.

Hardy: I mean that seems to me to be the most sensible... You know, I felt I needed to ring you up anyway to clarify why nothing much was happening, but...

Malcolm: Yes, well, I don't mind as long as I know that something is happening, if you know what I mean. line 340

Hardy: Now you know why we're being a bit sluggish and not taking a particularly firm line. Perhaps it would be best if I gave you a ring again in two or three weeks and then we can talk again.

Malcolm: Okay.

Hardy: Shall we leave it like that for the moment?

Malcolm: Yes, yes, okidoke.

Hardy: And if you don't hear from me, then don't feel shy about ringing and saying what the hell are you doing.

Malcolm: Yes, well I'll give you two or three weeks.

Hardy: Okay.

Malcolm: In the next two or three weeks I'm fairly busy so I probably won't do anything myself, editing-wise.

Hardy: I think what I'll do is I'll bring it in... I mean basically one does this kind of thing at home. I'll earmark a bit of time in the office and stay in and try to get through it.

Malcolm: Mm. Where exactly have you got up to, do you remember?

Hardy: How many bits are there, six is it?

Malcolm: Seven.

Hardy: Seven? Eight? line 360

Malcolm: Seven chapters and then the play.

Hardy: Seven chapters and the play. I think I've read... I think I'm in the fourth one.

Malcolm: The family one.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: Mm. Yes, that needs a bit of updating, what with all this test-tube baby/surrogate motherhood problem.

Hardy: Yes, quite, well...

Malcolm: But I mean the points are there.

Hardy: Okay, well can we leave it like that for the time being?

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: I'm sorry it's being so sluggish, but of course if it works out in the end...

Malcolm: Well I don't mind, I say, as long as I know it's not been forgotten.

page 10 (36)

Hardy: It's not the kind of proposal one gets every day!

Malcolm: No. (chuckling from both)

Hardy: Okay .

Malcolm: Right.

Hardy: Thanks very much.

Malcolm: Okay .

Hardy: Bye-bye.

Malcolm: Cheerio.

Go to the next item or the previous item in the Evidence (red) file.

Go to Malcolm's Statement of Claim, to the Case History, to the Affidavits: Ivon Asquith (1), Asquith (2), Henry Hardy, William Shaw (solicitor) (1), Sir Roger Elliott (1), Margaret Goodall, to the Witness Statements: Elliott, Hardy, Richard Charkin, Nicola Bion, Goodall, to the courtroom testimony of the Oxford Six, 14/3/1990: Elliott, Goodall, Bion, Asquith, Charkin, Hardy, to the testimony of Andrew Malcolm 13/3/1990, to the Chancery Court Judgment, the Appeal Court Judgment, the Damages assessment, the Settlement agreement.

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