*LEGAL EXPLANATION (rf The Remedy, page 50.)

The law allows that all documents (and recordings of conversations) that are generated with a view to taking legal action, are privileged, that is, unlike all other relevant documents pertaining to a matter in issue, they can be withheld from the evidence. Given that Richard Charkin's letter to me of 16th July 1985 constituted, in itself, a breach (the first of two) of Oxford's contract, my subsequent telephone conversations with Henry Hardy (this one and those following) were therefore held to be privileged and did not appear in the Trial or Appeal Court files (hence the a, b, c... numbering). By the time of the Damages Assessment proceedings however, certain passages in these conversations (e.g. Hardy's remarks about how he had planned to publish Making Names) had become relevant to these new issues, so their transcripts were then produced, to the delight of Oxford's City solicitors Clifford Chance, whose staff promptly spent hundreds of lucrative hours fruitlessly dissecting them. Case-students who wish to retrace the steps taken by the Trial and Appeal Courts should therefore now proceed straight to the next item in the original files and perhaps revisit these conversations later, while intrepid, carefree psycho-voyeurs may wish to read on now. - A. M.

PREAMBLE

By this stage I had received Richard Charkin's letter of 18th July which made it clear that there is no point in my resubmitting any revised version of Making Names to OUP. The conversation begins with me suggesting that I guarantee or put up the money for OUP and I ask what sort of sum would be involved. Hardy quotes a figure of £10,000 but reckons that such an offer would not help. This part of the conversation inadvertently went unrecorded. The recording starts when the possibility of Hardy himself publishing the book; his own imprint is discussed. - A. M.

Hardy: If I am not being asked to put up the money they would be no money problem. There would be the problem of time if you wanted quite a bit of editorial input, because had the book being published by the Press, although I have read the typescript, and I would have probably read it again when it came in, although for a reason I will explain in a minute I might not have done that, at that point it would have gone to a copy editor would have to do the detailed editorial work involved in preparing it for the typesetter, which in your case is not as heavy as in some because you write well. If you have got an author who writes badly, you have to do a lot of rewriting. In your case it is more a question of odd bits of tidying up and marking up for typography and so on.

Malcolm: Well hopefully there will not be any by the time I have had my last go at it.

Hardy: Well, I hope not. So, I suppose that might not be too vast a labour.

Malcolm: The thing that occurs to me is that the success of it depends a lot, in my mind, on it being taken seriously.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: And that in turn depends on its being published by a reputable publisher, and that is why OUP would be just the ticket.

Hardy: This is the big problem, yes. I mean it did cross my mind to suggest to you yesterday, and I still haven't entirely given up the idea that one might approach it in this sort of way, but then you lose, it seems to me, one of the greatest appeals of this way of doing it, the OUP imprint.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: Obviously, rationally, that counts for nothing. I mean a book is as good as it is, whether it is published by OUP or whether it's done by Neasden Groupies Inc., you know...

Malcolm: It doesn't get off to a good start with Neasden Groupies Inc. on the bottom of it.

Hardy: But unfortunately, the world does not behave in a rational way, and simply in terms of review coverage you do better with the established firm. I mean I have published, as I say, a number of books privately, so I have had experience of the difference it makes. If it is a local book, you know, a book which is about or connected with an area in some way, then the local press generally do you proud, whereas yours is not.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: If it is a general book, you are very lucky to get any review coverage at all. I mean I have been lucky in one or two cases and got on reviews in things like The Tablet and Country Life and that sort of thing, but...

Malcolm: Ptt...

Hardy: I have never had one of my privately printed books, as far as I can remember, in a national newspaper or magazine.

Malcolm: I see, yes.

Hardy: That may not be entirely true. I have just thought of one case where The Guardian did a short piece on a collection of epitaphs, but I mean that is trivial staff. So if it is review coverage you're looking for, you probably won't get that. The next thing is getting it into the shops. I mean that is the next way you sell a book, although I think yours is one which probably is going to need reviews badly, because it is the sort of book which would be recommended by word of mouth.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: You know, sitting on a shelf, supposing one got it into a bookshop, it would not be one that would immediately recommend itself to somebody who had never heard of it.

Malcolm: Mm, right.

Hardy: So getting it into a bookshop means having somebody to go round and persuade the buyers in bookshops to buy it. Now obviously that would normally be a publisher's rep, and if the publisher's rep works for OUP, then even if the buyer can't see immediately what the point of the book is, he is going to take a copy or two and try it if it comes from OUP. But it comes from somebody he has never heard of, he is going to say "sorry, it won't sell" and not bother.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: I mean you can employ free-lance reps. There are people who just do take books from small publishers around. I don't know whether they would take on just one book or not, they might... and you pay them a percentage of the price paid by the bookseller for every copy they get into the shop.

Malcolm: Hm, yes, this is all a bit hopeless though it isn't it.

Hardy: But I mean, you know, that is another thing which adds to the cost, and I don't think you would get very many in that way.

Malcolm: (bored) Yup.

Hardy: How else can you do it? If you have got enough contacts with people you think have some sort of influence, you can try and get pre-publication quotes from them which you then print on the jacket of the book, you know, "the most radically interesting philosophy book I have read in the last decade - B. Williams" or something, you know, whatever it might be.

Malcolm:Mm.

Hardy: But, you know, that might not work, and even if you get it, there is a long way to go after that.

Malcolm: Yup. Yes, yes, I see. I just wondered... You can't use the fact that you work for OUP in some way?

Hardy: Well, I can. There are various things that enables me to do for you, would enable me to do for you. One thing would be I could certainly ensure that the book as a physical object was no less good than it would have been if it had been published by OUP.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: And if you wanted to spend the money I could ensure that it was better.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: That is no problem. Absolutely none. Yes, I mean I have got contacts, I mean partly because I work at OUP, and partly because I studied philosophy at Oxford and know people who might be prepared to do something... I mean you can never expect somebody who does not have an interest to do a great deal, but they might be prepared to give a quote. You know, Alan Ryan might give a quote, the other reader might give a quote.

Malcolm: Yes. Who is the other reader?

Hardy: Galen Strawson, he is the son of Peter Strawson.

Malcolm: Oh, yes.

Hardy: Do you know who I mean?

Malcolm: I don't know Galen, but of course I know of Peter.

Hardy: Galen is a lecturer in philosophy at Saint Hugh's at the moment.

Malcolm: It runs in the family.

Hardy: Yes, he is a very different style of philosopher. He's erm, erm, much more novelistic than his father. His father is rather dry and so on and he is much more literary and interested in continental philosophy and so on, and rather more opaque in style, although he is not as opaque as he used to be. He does a lot of reviewing for the TLS, used to work as an assistant editor on the TLS, but now he has given that up I think.

Malcolm: Son of straw.

Hardy: Son of straw, exactly. Son of Straw-son, yes. Whether I am supposed to tell you that, I do not know, but I've told you anyway. I mean there is a sort of general rule that operates in publishing that you don't reveal the names of your referees, but I think the point of that is more when the report is negative, because then that stops you going out and murdering the person, and reports are generally solicited on the tacit understanding that the identity of the reviewer is not revealed, but I don't think there is any great sweat about that. I mean, again I think I technically erred in getting in touch with you before you had had Richard's letter, but it seems to me trivial. Anyway, just in case you are moved to reply to him I'd rather you didn't mention that I did, er...

Malcolm: No, well I would not, there is nothing to reply to, so...

Hardy: Not worth your replying, right. So, as I say, I did seriously think about this, and was still thinking about it because, you know, I could assist you to the extent of getting the book into physical existence.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: But although that is part of the battle, not an unimportant part, it is the lesser part of it I think.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: Of course, the one thing you can do if you have got a physical book is send it to paperback houses, and of course a paperback house is marginally, or more than marginally more prepared to take seriously something which comes in as a printed book than something which comes in as a more or less scruffy manuscript, but...

Malcolm: Will there is no point is there... I mean, if one was going to do this one would do the whole thing. I mean one wouldn't want to take it to a paperback house, one would want to be a paperback house.

Hardy: I see. You want to publish it only in paperback?

Malcolm: Well, erm...

Hardy: As I think I said to you yesterday, the reason I wanted to do it in hardback and paperback was... Well, there were two reasons: one, the paperback side is self-evident, I mean life ought to be in paperback and it ought to be purchaseable by students or young people generally. There are two reasons for the hardback: by having a hardback which you price quite expensively, you enable yourself to price the paperback a bit lower because you have absorbed some of your costs in the hardback, and the other reason is that if you're looking for reviews, the literary establishment is still so hidebound that it treats a hardback as a new book and a paperback as a reissue, whether or not this is the fact, so you tend to get wider review coverage if you offer a hardback for review.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: I mean you can get round that by binding just 25 copies in hardback if you want, but generally one does a modest run in hardback for reviews and libraries and the one or two people who are nuts enough to spend that much money so they can have a hardback on the shelves.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: Of course if you do a book privately then you are not carrying the same overheads as when you do it through a firm, so that you don't have to mark up your production costs. So I mean for example... I can work it out... The production cost of this book in the way I had costed it - this is just an example because it was a hardback - was, say, £2.50 a copy. Now to OUP if the book is costing £2.50 to produce, it has to be priced at £15 to make it commercially viable. If you and I did it and it cost £2.50 a copy, we could choose to accept as little profit margin over that as we wanted. We would have to add something to cope with the bookseller's discount - I don't know if you know, but the booksellers take about 35 percent discount - so it would have to go up to, say, £3 or £3.50.

Malcolm: (attempted joke) Yeah, we could make it a loss-leader couldn't we?

Hardy: You could if you wanted to throw away some money. I mean I think the price of £2.50, or even a bit more than that, would be ludicrously low for such a book. That is another thing, you can underprice a book as well as overprice it.

Malcolm: Sure.

Hardy: If it looks so obviously subsidised then people won't take it seriously. I suspect that at today's prices a paperback edition of your book ought to cost at the very least £4.95 and probably £5.95 and could go as high as £7.95 or £8.95. That is the sort of range I would think.

Malcolm: Hmm.

Hardy: So, as I say, you choose how much you charge for it. When I publish my own books I distribute them by mail-order, and that works in so far as you can get at the market by mail. You know, if you are publishing a book on nursing or gardening or something of that kind, you can put a coupon-ad in the magazine which is read by people in that category and you can sell awful lot of copies like that. The first book I ever published, no, the second, was a small medical book actually written by my father, and I sold thousands of copies, purely by mail.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: The trouble with your book, from that point of view, is that it is absolutely not the kind of book which ends itself to a mail-order promotion.

Malcolm: No.

Hardy: You could do a certain amount, but, you know, you can advertise it through Radical Philosophy and in the more staid philosophy journals. You could put posters up in the universities and polytechnics, you could do an awful lot of work if you had the time and inclination. And you could probably... You know, there is nobody who has got more commitment and effectiveness in this line than the author and is committed friends.

Malcolm: (fading) Er, yes.

Hardy: But you are still going to fall a lot short of what you achieve if you have a fully organised publisher's distribution outfit working for you.

Malcolm: Mm, yes, it all sounds a bit of a botch-up really.

Hardy: The reason I said paperback houses was that I think, you know, even if you did it yourself, and even if it was modestly successful, then there is still a possibility that the paperback house might want to take it on, in which case that is how it would reach new markets. And there are cases of books which have become best-sellers privately, such as The Whole Earth Catalogue.

Malcolm: (absently) Yup.

Hardy: Which other, conventional publishers are crying out to take over because they are such money-spinners, but they are not allowed to. But again, this isn't really a suitable candidate for it. I am perfectly happy to offer advice and expertise in this way, but you would have to consider whether it is likely enough to work.

Malcolm: It sounds a bit of a botch-up doesn't it.

Hardy: Well, it would produce a perfectly good book, it is a question of whether it would get to people.

Malcolm: Yes, as you say, that is only a quarter of the battle.

Hardy: It depends on your temperament. I don't know you, but some people would say, you know, I have put x years of my life into this, let's have a go, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Malcolm: Yes, but I wouldn't on the other hand want to risk it falling flat on its face because of a cock-up over the way it was launched, because I think it does depend a lot, as you say, on getting known, getting the word around, and getting a good reviews and that sort of thing.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: Or at least controversial reviews.

Hardy: Yes. I wouldn't mind, this is a very small offer, but I do have this private imprint which is, you know, mildly known to certain people in literary journalism. I could offer to use that imprint, as far as it went anywhere.

Malcolm: Yes, well at least it would seem as though I wasn't publishing it myself.

Hardy: Yes, nobody need know what lay behind the scenes.

Malcolm: You don't think that my offer of subsidising it myself, financing it myself for OUP would help?

Hardy: I don't. I could ask, but I don't think that it is really the money. I think Richard Charkin is more concerned about OUP being seen to publish a book which does not measure up to the standards of OUP. As you know, I think he is wrong about that judgment of your book.

Malcolm: Well he doesn't seem good to have made that judgment does he?

Hardy: His mention in his letter of 'content' I think implies that.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: I think he does, and the things he says viva voce suggest that. I mean, he has read the reports and I tend to pick on the good bits and he picks on the reservations, and depending on where you focus your light, you get a different impression.

Malcolm: Yes. Incidentally, on that subject, it seems very strange that all three of you, the reports that have come in, say lots of nice things about this and that and the other, but all have expressed doubts about the play, the last chapter.

Hardy: Yes, well, it could be that we are right, but I know it is very important to you.

Malcolm: Well not only that, but I was going to say it is very odd, because when I first took it to Penguins when the whole thing was a bundle of notes, and the play was a play - it wasn't written into the conversation - that was what everybody picked up on then.

Hardy: Positively?

Malcolm: Yes, positively. The Penguin people who read it, and the guy was an atomic physicist, some quite well known bloke, Laurence Bright or somebody, and I have a copy of his review and he raved about the play, but had doubts about the other parts.

Hardy: If you have got anything on file about the pre-history of the book, I would be very interested to see it if you felt you could send it.

Malcolm: Well, I could dig that out I should think.

Hardy: Yes, certainly.

Malcolm: But that was the first thing they all started buzzing about really, so it has been very strange that it is the part that you have all got doubts about.

Hardy: Well, has it changed? You say it has changed, but how much has it changed?

Malcolm: Well the content of the play, and the ideas there, it has got better. It has still got some improvement to go, but I think it is much better, personally.

Hardy: Yes. I am very ready to allow that, you know, one does not get the point straight off at the first reading, that is why I want to read it again. In fact I left the whole typescript at a local print-shop this afternoon, and I have ordered a complete photocopy of it so that I can read it when I sent you yours back.

Malcolm: Thanks. Yes, I would appreciate it if you could, um, keep your copy under wraps, if you see what I mean. I don't want it flying around.

Hardy: How do you mean?

Malcolm: Well, I am amazed that no one has thought, has come up with this idea before. To me the ideas contained in the play are very easily ripped off.

Hardy: Oh I see what you mean, yes, right. Well, certainly.

Malcolm: I mean copies of it have been ripped off, by certain people, and I am fully expecting to see it produced as a play some time under some other name. I am just waiting for that to happen. For all I know it may have been done.

Hardy: That may happen, but, I don't know, people always think that their product is more attractive than it will seem to a disinterested person, I guess.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: You mean that they would rip off the words or they would use the idea?

Malcolm: The idea.

Hardy: Yes, maybe.

Malcolm: I mean, people have seen it and not sent it back and refused to send it back, which seems a bit odd.

Hardy: Really?

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: People are shits aren't they.

Malcolm: I mean that has happened. For a while I wrote television scripts with my brother, I think I told you that.

Hardy: Did you? Did you try and get them on the TV?

Malcolm: We had one or two good ideas we thought, and we hoiked them around to various companies, and at times we thought it looked promising, but various things that seemed a bit too close to be coincidence did appear in comedy shows, some time later, that kind of thing.

Hardy: I see. Did you have scripts used?

Malcolm: Oh no!

Hardy: No.

Malcolm: No. But I think we did have one or two ideas ripped off in that respect. So if you could, please keep it to yourself.

Hardy: I won't show it to anybody else.

Malcolm: And if you could, or when you sent the manuscript back, if it is possible, if you are permitted to send copies of the reviews that you have had, the reports.

Hardy: Well I can send you, erm, I will send you an anonymized copy of Galen Strawson's, because I would like not to have officially told you, erm...

Malcolm: Yes, yes.

Hardy: I don't know that Alan Ryan's constitutes a review really, it is a sort of collection of remarks, some of which are made over the telephone and some of which...

Malcolm: Well, if you can collect them, whatever they are.

Hardy: I gave you what I thought I could give you in a letter didn't I?

Malcolm: There was only a sentence really, something about me being "Collingwoodian".

Hardy: That's right, didn't I put that in a letter?

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: Yup. I think that was really pretty much all there was to it. I read it again this morning because I have just done my reply, my Appeal against my disciplinary thingummy-push, and I wanted to check in the file that there wasn't anything I had missed. He said that he had finished reading it and he had rather surprised himself and had changed his mind having found it a bit hard going to start with, and he thought it rather good, and would like to have a go at publishing it if possible. He thought the philosophy was good and Collingwoodian in the way I have mentioned. If he had reservations about it they were to do with the rather long slabs of scientific explanation and the play at the end, which again is what I said to you I think.

Malcolm: Yes, you quoted that bit, yup.

Hardy: I mean I can make a written extract if you would like, but I don't think there's anything more than that.

Malcolm: Okay, okay, whatever you have got anyway.

Hardy: Okay.

Malcolm: Right.

Hardy: Do you want to think on about the possibility of doing some private venture?

Malcolm: Well, perhaps I can ask you to think on about it.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: Because I don't know. I am happy to put up the money, if it makes sense financially.

Hardy: Have you got that sort of money? (Hardy had earlier mentioned a figure of £10,000)

Malcolm: Oh I can get it, yes.

Hardy: Can you?

Malcolm: Yes. But, as I say, I wouldn't want to do it if it were going to end up a sort of mail-order in Homes and Gardens sort of thing, with no reviews. The whole thing depends upon it being done properly, and that is really your end. I mean, I wouldn't want to get involved in trying to sell myself.

Hardy: No. Well in that case, when you say it has to be done properly, I mean the production would be, but I am in no position to offer anything other than mail-order. As I say, I do my own books by mail-order, so that would be what it would be if it came through me. I mean there are a number of small outfits which you may have thought of, which do various categories of specialist books, things like Salamander Press... Those lists depend very closely on the tastes of the people who run them. You might find one of those which was sympathetic to your ideas which might well be prepared to offer you some sort of proper distribution service, albeit of a fairly modest kind, particularly if you were offering some sort of subsidy, but I am not quite sure...

Malcolm: Can I ask, do you have any contacts, or does Alan Ryan have any contacts with Blackwell's? Is there any point in trying to wake up Kim Pickin? I mean as far as I am concerned she is completely asleep. I never had it rejected from Blackwell's, they just took six months to not read it, so I asked for it back.

Hardy: They sent it back with no comment?

Malcolm: She sent it back with some absolutely banal comment, but she had not read it.

Hardy: She hadn't?

Malcolm: No, no-one had. So it had not been rejected, they did ask to see it, but they just didn't read it.

Hardy: Right. I don't know her personally, but I do know some people at Blackwell's, and I actually want to speak to them anyway, so I could certainly inquire whether there would be any point in...

Malcolm: I tell you what, it is quite long, but I had a correspondence with Kim Pickin. It is actually quite interesting reading. She did seem to express great interest, it is just the letters didn't bear any relation to the action, or rather the lack of it.

Hardy: I'm afraid that is only too common in publishing. I'm afraid I'm guilty myself very often of expressing interest as a means of buying time, and it's just what happens to you, I'm afraid, when you have got too many things to do.

Malcolm: But if she were presented with the thing again and some sort of read -made reports from people who had actually got thrown it...

Hardy: ...she might change her mind, it is not impossible. I can make informal inquiries for you if you like.

Malcolm: Yes please, if you would, because, as I say, she didn't actually make up her mind, I just asked for it back, so she never got round to thinking about it at all, to saying yea or nay, she never read it.

Hardy: Yup. Well, it would be much better for it to be published by Blackwell's.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: Yes, alright, I will do that.

Malcolm: Perhaps you would act as my literary agent in this matter Henry?

Hardy: Yes, to that extent I will happily do that.

Malcolm: The normal percentage will be, er...

Hardy: Oh, I wouldn't expect any payment. But if I sense a reasonable flicker there shall I send them the top copy rather than returning it to you?

Malcolm: The one you've got?

Hardy: Yes, the original.

Malcolm: Yes, why not.

Hardy: But I'll check with you before I do.

Malcolm: It's the sort of thing that might be best approached on a casual basis, waiting for the right moment to mention it, because she will remember the correspondence.

Hardy: She will, will she?

Malcolm: Oh yes, I should think so, I belaboured her with a couple of quite long letters.

Hardy: Well she may say, you know, immediately: "Oh God no, I never want to see it again," in which case at least we know where we stand.

Malcolm: Yup. I don't think so... Yes, that is probably the best avenue to explore, for the moment anyway.

Hardy: Okay, I will get onto that, I will do that.

Malcolm: Great.

Hardy: I will get back you when...

Malcolm: Do you want to hear the correspondence, is there any point in my digging out the letters?

Hardy: If you want.

Malcolm: Just a minute... It will at least put you in the picture... I think she may still have the introductory package, I am not sure. Perhaps it would be best to give all of it to her again.

Hardy: I have to say that I hear over the grapevine, not knowing her, that she is, er, thought in general to be not very sparkly, I think she is less interested in philosophy than she is in the other part of the list she runs, which I think is...

Malcolm: Fashion?

Hardy: Women's Studies I think.

Malcolm: Yup. Yes, well, no comment. "Dear Ms. Pickin, I am writing to you..." I wrote first on June 4th, 1984, the usual letter. This reply came back promptly:

"Thank you for your letter of 7th June and for your fascinating synopsis Making Names which I read with great interest and enjoyment. It is tempting to ask to see the complete manuscript, but that would be pure self-indulgence, as I am afraid that, for the reasons you predict, I will have to decline your kind offer of publication. Sadly, the market for philosophy books, indeed for most academic books, seems to have become increasingly stereotyped and conservative. As a result it is a rather risky luxury to produce a general book aimed at the interested lay-reader prepared to part with £15 or so - a dying breed. Except with very established authors you will probably find most publishers confine themselves to two categories: scholarly monographs and student textbooks with direct bearing on identifiable courses."

Hardy: A well written letter, actually.

Malcolm: All fair comment. Not terribly well read I'm afraid.

Hardy: It is all true.

Malcolm: Perhaps it's a standard paragraph, perhaps it's on the computer.

"I wish I could give you more encouragement as I enjoyed the synopsis greatly. Your flare for writing suggests that you should perhaps experiment with fiction writing if you have not already done so. With a slight change of balance you may be able to marry your writing skills and your interest in philosophy in a different context. With very best wishes..."

"Dear Andrew, it is meant to be more efficient to send a standard rejection letter and considered a deadly sin to indulge in correspondence with writers, once the rejection note has been sent! However, as you will see, I cannot resist pursuing projects that interest me personally, even if I can't see a way of fitting them into the Blackwell framework. I must reiterate that while I found your last letter very interesting and I wish that the philosophy market was more flexible, I have to keep an eye on the financial prospects of the firm and publish books that I am reasonably certain will sell. In order to publish a book such as yours at £5 we would need to be certain of selling at least 5,000 copies - few philosophy books exceed that number these days. We would also need to be able to predict roughly what kind of student courses or libraries would buy the book so that we could be certain of our 'core' market. With a book that does not fit into any conventional academic categories this is particularly difficult."

"Occasionally philosophy books do sell in vast quantities - and Jonathon Glover's recent Causing Death and Saving Lives published by Penguin is, I believe, doing very well. No doubt the Allen and Unwin editions of Russell and Ayer will also sell in thousands, but, as I am sure you will realise, these were pretty safe publishing bets."

Hardy: Well, yes, that is more true of Russell and Ayer than it is of Jonathon Glover, although it is true to some extent of him. It's less true of Godel, Escher, Bach, but that was one in a thousand.

Malcolm: Fortunately.

"It is not that Blackwell's are hidebound or risk-averse but there is a limit to how far we can afford to experiment. At least one potential author writes in each week promising a new approach to philosophy aimed at a broader audience. The quality obviously varies, and yours I would rank among the best..."

"...but as I am sure you will understand, we cannot pursue all these alternatives. I don't feel that I miss understand the nature and purpose of philosophy at all, I just feel that the word now turns off many readers who would find it stimulating and enjoyable in a more literary context. I am sure that Derrida would argue that philosophy is literature anyway. Please don't feel put down by my suggestion. I really can't guarantee anything, but if you do want to send your manuscript I would no doubt enjoy looking through it. I will give some thought too to other potential publishers, but I must admit that no-one immediately springs to mind. With very best wishes (please excuse the typing errors)."

Hardy: She said she would look at it from personal interest, yes.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: Then it was sent in and she didn't.

Malcolm: Then I sent another long letter - I won't read you that, I got a receipt back - where are we now, 16th July, and then the next letter I've got here it was 28th November, and I phoned up several times and she had forgotten about it and: "Oh yes, that is the thing about so-and-so" and got it wrong, you know, and, "Oh yes, erm, erm, look, I'll phone you back in a few minutes" - in other words I'll dig it out and look at the first page - all that sort of thing, so, as I say, I got frustrated with all that and I just asked her to send it back.

Hardy: Mm. Yes.

Malcolm: And I got this accompanying letter, at the end of November '84:

"I hope that this has reached safely and apologise for having kept Making Names for so long. As I said some time ago, this is really not Blackwell's kind of thing. I had hoped to spend some time on the manuscript myself and offer constructive suggestions, but have been steadily more and more overwhelmed with work of late. You could try sending it to the Open University who may like to dramatise all or part of it for teaching purposes, if you thought that appropriate."

Hardy: Yes, interesting. I mean, that does sound to me as if it is very unlikely that she is going to want to see it again, but I can find out.

Malcolm: Yes please. But I don't know whether Blackwell's...

Hardy: I think she is right about Blackwell's. She has put it actually better than I could have done myself, and all credit to her for that. She has described the trap you are in when you're working for a publisher of this kind.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: It's perfectly true that you get about one week of this kind of thing. When I say 'this kind of thing', this sounds rude to you, but I mean something we would normally classify as a 'fringe trade philosophy' or something.

Malcolm: Yup, oh sure.

Hardy: And, you know, one gets very accustomed to it, and you also have to get very accustomed rejecting 99.9 percent of it on the strength of a few seconds' inspection.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: And so, if you like, the fact that yours has got as far as it has, not only with us but with her and Penguins, shows that it is different from the others, and it would have to be obviously so to get past that first few seconds' scrutiny.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: But, even though you get past, out of that sort of general ruck of stuff, you have still got this perfectly true observation about the nature of philosophy publishing. It is risky.

Malcolm: Well, yes, but if I am prepared to take the financial risk?

Hardy: Yes, there are two risks you see. There is the financial risk and there is the risk to the image of the firm, that is the other one.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: I mean at the end of the day, to get something like mine done, as the guy in the book says, you have got to be in the family haven't you, you have got to be a Blackwell or a Strawson or someone.

Hardy: Well yes. If you mean a book like yours, yes. A book like yours will only be published by a conventional publisher if either you have a personal connection, or you find somebody like myself who works for the firm and believes in it and has enough power to get it through, which I'm afraid, as you can see, I don't. You know, if I was at a more senior level in the Press, then it would have gone through because it would have been me who made the decision, or at least, the person who made the decision would have been prepared to back my judgment.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: Under another regime, or if Richard Charkin was a different sort of person... I'm senior enough now to get it through, but it so happens that his attitude to me is not of that kind.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: And so long as he is there and now he has taken that stand against it, he is not going to change his mind.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: I mean, if he was run over by a bus tomorrow and replaced by somebody else, we might start again, but, erm, I can't count on that.

Malcolm: Mm. I didn't hear that. Yup, which all goes to prove one of the points in the book doesn't it?

Hardy: (laughs) Yes, well there is that! There is that! I mean one of the things I actually delight in, have delighted in, at the Press over the years is publishing the odd slightly quirky thing, you know, which is untypical of the more boring aspects of the Press's publishing, and in my earlier years here the management structure was a bit different. Richard Charkin was not where he is now, and a number of things got through. For example, I may have told you this earlier in our conversations, I published a book called London After the Bomb.

Malcolm: Oh yes.

Hardy: Which was a very strongly anti-Government, anti-Establishment attack on the Home Office's plans for nuclear...

Malcolm: Protest and Die, yup.

Hardy: Protest and Die and all that, yes. And that was a book which was a bit controversial at the time and actually sold very well. Hold on a second... (Someone comes into Hardy's office)... Right, sorry, carry on... That was the date of my Appeal.

Malcolm: The date of your Appeal?

Hardy: My Appeal against the disciplinary warning.

Malcolm: God, do you have to go and sit in front of people?

Hardy: Oh I think so, yes.

Malcolm: Great! Can I come? Is it public? I'll be in the gallery.

Hardy: No, it's not that public, it's only three or four people.

Malcolm: Mm. Well, good luck with that. Er, I have just dug out the review from years ago from the Penguins people, shall I read it to you? Interested?

Hardy: Uhuh.

Malcolm: "The author provides a good synopsis so I've no need to repeat what the book is about." This is Laurence Bright, have you heard of him?

Hardy: I haven't heard of him.

Malcolm: I had vaguely heard of him, and I found out he is an atomic physicist or something.

Hardy: I see.

Malcolm:

"Certainly he is successful in writing for the general reader, especially in the philosophical parts. With science it is difficult and I think a reader with very little background would get bogged down, but they are no doubt it a minority these days. The dialogue sections in particular are good and I would have liked to have seen more of them."

"There are at least two books here: the attacks on current orthodoxy in science and in philosophy are obviously related, but simply won't go with an attempt to be introductory, which is in fact abandoned after bit. A reader who wants to be introduced to philosophy probably finds the rest of the book disturbing. The introductory bit isn't in fact very good, it is so abstract as to be boring. Things come to life much more with the attack on causality, which is a major preoccupation."

Hardy: I agree with all that, yes.

Malcolm: Well it was different then, it wasn't even in the same order or anything.

Hardy: No? Well, I think something of the same can be said about it as it is now.

Malcolm: Yup, fair enough.

"So, for most of the book he is attacking the inconsistencies and incoherences in contemporary philosophy, psychology, physics, genetics, education, ethics, you name it, and whether he is right or not, no reader can take so much. The thing rambles. Also it is very uneven: the section on morals is very much better than, say, on psychology."

"When he emerges at Chapter 12, he finds another book stretching before him, the long attack on atomic science. Here I think the relentless negativity is going to make most people... da-de-da... The present physics has loose ends in plenty, he says, but it has such an impressive set of achievements that we need to know much more clearly what an alternative would be like in detail. Moreover a lot of this attack is more rhetoric than argument... But I guess a book by him that concentrated much more on a single theme and tried to be more positive, was much shorter and more disciplined, could be successful. I suggest the cause-and-effect theme, which seems the most interesting to me... Meanwhile the play at the end is really rather good, whether one knows the background or not, and might well get adapted for television."

Hardy: Uhuh?

Malcolm: I did actually send the play out, at one point, just by itself, to a guy who reads things for the National Theatre, and I have got a good thing from him about it somewhere.

Hardy: Right.

Malcolm: But anyway, I remember the general feeling from the people at that time was that the play was the strong point.

Hardy: Well yes, well they may be right. I think that sounds like a pretty sensible report, and if you're thinking of turning the book into something more safe and conventional and predictable, although retaining some of your own individuality, all those suggestions are reasonably sensible. But I think you feel, don't you, that it is its whole sprawling totality that you wish to offer the world?

Malcolm: It is really, yup.

Hardy: Yes. And you know, occasionally, that...

Malcolm: At that time it was about half as long again as it is now, incidentally.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: There was a whole section of scientific stuff, I mean detailed scientific theories being analysed in the light of the philosophy.

Hardy: As you know, I still think it is too long. I mean not necessarily because there is any particular part which one can say is pointless or dispensable or worse than the rest or anything, but just because it is psychologically a very large meal to sit down to, that is all.

Malcolm: Yup.

Hardy: Just why that should matter one may ask, but it just does.

Malcolm: Well, a 400-page paperback doesn't sound of that huge to me.

Hardy: No, that doesn't, but I think that is the limit, and I think you are pushing against the limit there. If you got it down a bit them probably that is not too far out, particularly if you could do something about this thing both Alan and I experienced, which is that it is hard to get into.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: The first part is too long. Subdivide it or something.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: Anyway.

Malcolm: Right. Well, to cut a long story short for the moment, if you could sound out Kim Pickin.

Hardy: I will.

Malcolm: Or your friends at Blackwells, whoever they are.

Hardy: Mm.

Malcolm: And see if there is any flicker, as you say.

Hardy: Yup, okay.

Malcolm: And if there is, bung them what you've got.

Hardy: Okay.

Malcolm: The reports or whatever.

Hardy: Yup, okay, then I'll let you know.

Malcolm: Okay.

Hardy: Thanks very much.

Malcolm: Right.

Hardy: Goodbye for the moment.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: Bye.

Malcolm: Cheers.

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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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