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.
Hardy: Luckily the meeting I thought was happening isn't happening, so I will talk to you now if that is alright.
Malcolm: Fine. Well, I am very sorry that I rang you when I did and catch you in bed and all that.
Hardy: It was a bad move. I probably haven't told you, but I have a small daughter who gets us up at all hours in the mornings, so we tend to go to bed rather earlier than you might expect.
Malcolm: Oh I see. I tend to go to bed later and later these days, if at all. Er, yes... so I was wondering if it was sensible to keep ringing you at all, or to keep ringing you at the office.
Hardy: Nobody other than me knows you have rung at the office, other than the switchboard, and the switchboard don't know you from Adam, so that is okay .
Malcolm: Oh good, yes.
Hardy: I left a message for you didn't I, which is presumably why you're ringing me?
Malcolm: Err...
Hardy: No?
Malcolm: No.
Hardy: I did leave a message on your answerphone, on your recording thing, saying that I had spoken to Kim Pickin at Blackwell's, would tell you and then ring again.
Malcolm: Oh really? I hadn't got that one; perhaps it has got lost in my tape-muddle here. Have you seen her?
Hardy: No, I just spoke to her on the telephone and had a long conversation with her, very amicable, and she, as I expected, and I think I told you I expected, does not feel, given her bosses and the kind of thing she is supposed to to be doing, that there would be any point in her seeing it again.
Malcolm: Yup. She did remember it did she?
Hardy: Yes she did, with a little prompting, but as soon as she cottoned on to what I was talking about she remembered it quite well.
Malcolm: Yes, okay, so that's that.
Hardy: She had two, er, suggestions which may or may not commend themselves to you. One I suspect has already been ruled out by you and that is, what about Harvester Press? You have presumably tried them have you?
Malcolm: Yes, they have not even...
Hardy: A straight no from them?
Malcolm: I don't think we got to the manuscript stage at all or anything, no.
Hardy: Right. It is the sort of thing that they perhaps are more likely to do than many other publishers, but obviously they don't go for this one for some reason. The other thing she said was: have you thought an approaching American publishers? Which first of all struck me as an odd suggestion because the setting at least of your book is so English, but then she went on it to explain that what she had in mind was that there were a number of American, a larger number of American presses who were sympathetic to the un-hidebound-strait-jacket-type of books.
Malcolm: Well, yes, I have been through all this thought. There are various problems with that.
Hardy: Are there?
Malcolm: Yes. I won't go into them.
Hardy: Right. Well I thought you probably had.
Malcolm: Well I had thought of it and I have actually written to several, but when you start investigating it, the problems involved, simply just the problems involved in being here and them over there...
Hardy: Yes, I can see that. What were you ringing about then if it wasn't about that?
Malcolm: Well it was about, er, two things, two sets of things I wanted to say, to ask really. The first you may think is... I may be poking my nose in where it it should not belong, tell me if that is the case, but, thinking about all this business that has happened between you and me and you and your Charkin friend, it seems to have - I feel I am clutching at straws here, the walls kind of closing in around me - but you and I seem to have become in a strange way allies in this.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: In the sense that you at least have read my thing and have got some time for it.
Hardy: Yup.
Malcolm: And now that your bosses seem to be coming down on you... I just wanted to ask a bit more about your situation and this disciplinary hearing and so on. This is all a foreign language to me, but are you in serious trouble over it all, this this business about your being threatened with dismissal and all?
Hardy: Well, we have an official disciplinary procedure in the way that you do in a large organisation, I think for understandable reasons, so that you have a mechanism for getting rid of people without argument about unfair dismissal and all that stuff, industrial tribunals and all that, you know.
Malcolm: Yes. I don't really know, but anyway, yes, I can imagine.
Hardy: We have to have a system of that kind. In my view, and in the view of everybody I have talked to about this, to use such a procedure in a case like the current one is, is, is quite inappropriate, whether or not you agree about the book. I mean even if... Let us assume that I have made as big a mistake about the book as Charkin would like to think, I mean still, I am a senior member of the Press and, you know, an informal chat was the way to handle it.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: But for some reason which I do not fully understand he has chosen to be formal about it.
Malcolm: Well I mean, is there, without, again as I say, poking my nose in where it is not wanted, is it the case for example that maybe for one reason or another, and I suspect politics may not be far below the surface, that Charkin has been trying to get rid of you for some time and this could be an excuse, or something?
Hardy: Their is an element of that in it, possibly. I mean I have no concrete grounds for that. That has been put to him, certainly, by more than one of my advocates. He, naturally enough, stoutly denies it.
Malcolm: As he would.
Hardy: He simply says that this case, taken on its own, or whoever it is who has done it, merits this kind of response.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: And naturally he would take that kind of lne, and given that he does take that kind of line, one cannot, as it were, press any other interpretation.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: But I think, you know, I mean, I don't know why you're asking me this, I mean, I am loth as it were... I don't know whether you are trying to build up ammunition of some kind, but...
Malcolm: No, no, no. Well, what I was going to say was...
Hardy: If your are simply wanting comfort, then I think you could take that degree of comfort, though I think that, and it is unfortunate for you, but there is an element of personality in here which has nothing to do with your book.
Malcolm: Quite so.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: And nothing to do with me.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: But it is to do with me in and the sense that...
Hardy: You get the dirty the end of the stick.
Malcolm: Well, not only that, but I am in a position, it seems - I mean this is the last thing I want to be in a position to do - but, I don't know how serious your trouble is, but presumably if I didn't know you, if I had not had any contact with you and all the rest of it and I came on strong and was angry about what has happened, which I have got every right to be...
Hardy: Yup.
Malcolm: ... I mean, if I tried to cause trouble with the Press over what has happened, it would cause trouble for you...
Hardy: It would.
Malcolm: ...which I have no intention of doing. By the same token, on the other hand, is there anything, since I regard you as an ally...
Hardy: Yup.
Malcolm: ...is there anything I can do to mitigate your problems with this tribunal or anything? Is there anything, any letter I can write?
Hardy: That's very sweet of you will, let me think, well... You see... I mean... the only thing that occurs to me that you could write... I mean, I am thinking aloud here, is a letter to me that would would arrive in time for tomorrow morning, which is when the hearing is, which said, that you, erm, understood and I had made, erm, that I was acting in good faith and that, erm, and that as it turned out unfortunately I, you know, I had, erm, misjudged the outcome of a formal procedure and, erm, that you will, in the circumstances, though you were disappointed, erm, you weren't sort of hopping furious and you had no personal grudge or anything like this, you know, then that would, as it were, damage one part of his case against me, which is that I have caused an author to be needlessly upset. On the other hand, what I have just suggested you say is probably not true really.
Malcolm: No.
Hardy: Also, at in a way, even if you wrote that, even if it were true, it is not so much a question of whether I did or did not upset you, it is a question of principle that I might have done, if you see what I mean.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: It is that I did something which, you know, might have these consequences and I should not have done it.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: I mean I did think of mentioning at the Appeal, without you writing a letter, that, you know, though disappointed, you had been decent and philosophical about it, because that might have helped to clear the air a bit, but beyond that I cannot think of anything, no.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: At the other end, you know, you kindly said you don't plan to jump up and down and get cross and so on. I am just wondering, you know, if that could conceivably work in any way. I mean, I don't think it would, I think the only thing that you... What you could do I suppose, could have done, is to write to Alan Ryan and say: look here is a book which you think is worth publishing and, er, you think it is up to him as a Delegate of the press to insist that they get on and publish it rather than fooling around like this, but I don't think that Alan would want to. You know, although we all like the book, you will understand when I say it is not a book we would choose to stake our reputations on in quite that way.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: And I don't know that Alan would take so strong a line, because if he did, if he was going to do that, he would have to insist on the publication of the book against strong opposition from Richard Charkin, probably against opposition from other Delegates who are more sympathetic to the management line and all the rest of it, and it would be quite a major battle.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: I don't think it is the issue on which...
Malcolm: And if he were willing to wage it, in any case he would probably be more likely to do so without prompting from me; any more prompting from me would just...
Hardy: I think so. I mean, I certainly have not yet let this one sit down at all. I have myself been thinking of suggesting to Alan that he brings some pressure to bear. I think the first thing I wanted to do was to get the disciplinary side out of the way.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: I mean in answer to your question, the disciplinary procedure has a various stages 1, 2, 3, 4 of which the first is a verbal warning, the second is a written warning, the third is a final warning, erm, and the last is dismissal.
Malcolm: And what is this?
Hardy: I am on stage three.
Malcolm: Good God! Really?
Hardy: Which means that the thing stays on the file if I lose the Appeal, and then I have only got to do one more thing that he can nail and I'm out.
Malcolm: Really!?
Hardy: Which is totally ludicrous, as you can imagine. I think, as I say, it is ludicrous that he should be using the disciplinary procedure at all. Incidentally, one thing you should not know if you talk to him is that I have talked to you about this side of it, he would be furious.
Malcolm: Right, yes, well I have no intention of talking to him, so...
Hardy: No. So, I mean to see what happens after the Appeal. If I win the Appeal, which I doubt that I am going to, but if I do win it, or if I win it convincingly, I shall feel in a slightly stronger position then to suggest that since he was wrong about warning me he may be wrong about the book too, and perhaps we should have another look at it.
Malcolm: That is another thing I was going to say: once your Appeal is out of the way - again it is not my business - but it would be interesting for me to hear the outcome - once this decision is made, presumably then what happens cannot affect it, it cannot be re-examined?
Hardy: No, no.
Malcolm: So then I would be free to do a number of things. I could then jump up and down, not with serious hope of getting any satisfaction from OUP, but in the sense... It has been suggested to me that if I jumped up and down about it and another suitable publisher got wind that this book had been accepted and then stamped on internally, the controversy aspect might prick up another publisher's ears. I wonder whether that can be used to my advantage?
Hardy: I think that is a very long shot. I think it is a very long shot and I don't think that, erm, you need to jump up and down if you want to try it on. I mean if you want to try it on another publisher and you want to use its sad history at OUP as part of your case, then I think that case already exists and I can certainly talk to the other publisher and explain exactly what has happened without your going and jumping up and down.
Malcolm: Yes, quite.
Hardy: I am very happy to do that.
Malcolm: Right.
Hardy: I am happy to write to any publisher you like and say: here is a book which I think, subject to revision of course, is an interesting one to publish, worth having a shot at, and I am very sorry that we have not been able to do it here, for reasons which I am happy to explain if you want.
Malcolm: Yes, but, as far as... My feeling about all this is that it takes such a long time to get anywhere with anyone that... It seems such a terrible shame to have got now three people who have read it at OUP, all in one way or another seemingly favourable to a degree, not to use that.
Hardy: It is terribly frustrating, but unfortunately as far as OUP is concerned a miss is as good as a mile. I mean the thing is... I am quite sure you are right and that there is no point in pursuing it with OUP in the present climate, because Richard Charkin, whatever he might have thought of it otherwise, is now obviously dead set against letting it through.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: I mean even more so, actually, if I win the Appeal.
Malcolm: You reckon?
Hardy: He wouldn't then want to give me the satisfaction of the book going through, and he is the person who has to sign the form authorising the production investment.
Malcolm: Is that right?
Hardy: There is no point in... I don't think there is any question of... The only thing that would move him would be an instruction from on high, and that will only come if Alan Ryan were prepared to make a major issue of it, and my guess is that he wouldn't. If you do want to make any fuss, I would beg you to make it to Alan Ryan, not to Richard Charkin, because that would be totally counter-productive. to make it with a Richard. I mean, (a) it would be counter-productive for you, and (b) it would rebound on me.
Malcolm: Certainly, yes.
Hardy: Whereas if you wrote to Alan, if that is what you wanted to do, I mean he would either say: terribly sorry, no, I don't feel I can do it, or he might do something, in which case that would be fine.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: I can say to Alan if you like that you are thinking of making some kind of fuss about it and see what he thinks, but, er, I haven't put to him yet because in fact when I first talked, you,er, didn't sound as if you were.
Malcolm: No, well it is only a tactical ploy anyway, um... It is interesting, rather strange: spooky things have been happening around here, one of which was the day I got all this bad news - Thursday was the day I got your call wasn't it - I had a flood and bad news. One spooky thing that happened was that that evening my car spontaneously caught fire and burnt out.
Hardy: Good Lord!
Malcolm: And another spooky thing that happened yesterday, no, Saturday, was that Alan... I don't know if there is any explanation for this, but I wanted to spend just a bit of time - I am woefully ignorant of the people in the philosophy world just at the moment, having been out of touch for so long - but I looked up all I could find about Alan Ryan in the reference library down here, which is quite a good reference library, and I found various things out, and I got copies of this and that, and I saw that there was an article, I looked through The Times Index and got all the articles and things that he has written and publications - they have got it all on microfilm- but there was nothing I actually wanted a copy of except for a profile done in the Sunday Times magazine in 1978.
Hardy: Really ?
Malcolm: Yes, a photo and a biography and he was being billed as the whizz-kid academic of the eighties or something.
Hardy: Yes (chuckles).
Malcolm: And I went to the desk, to the girl and said I would like a copy of this, could you dig this out for me, and she went to the microfilm-file and put it on the machine and whizzed through it to the right place, and it so happened that that copy of that magazine was missing off the microfilm.
Hardy: Oh really!?
Malcolm: Yes, it is not there. I don't know whether Alan realises this, maybe it is not on any of the microfilms, but it is certainly not on the Brighton one. She could not understand it, it was the very first time it had ever happened.
Hardy: Really ? I am sure it is a coincidence, but it sounds like a gremlin doesn't it?
Malcolm: It does. Anyway, so, right. But the upshot of all this... if I may be so bold as to hear the upshot of your disciplinary hearing?
Hardy: Yes of course I will tell you that.
Malcolm: Yes, I mean at least I would know whether you were still in place.
Hardy: Well I think, yes, I have to be still in place in that it is only a final warning, not a dismissal.
Malcolm: Yes, but how precariously in place.
Hardy: Well, obviously, I would be careful not to give him reason to jump again, and actually I am now, erm, I think one thing I perhaps have not told you yet, which I ought to, is that I have been moved from the job in which I commissioned your book, or tried to commission your book, which was in what is called the General Books Department to what I am doing now, which is commissioning academic sociology and politics books.
Malcolm: Uhuh.
Hardy: This was also a move that was imposed upon me by Richard Charkin.
Malcolm: Oh really !?
Hardy: And it is a move I did not want to make.
Malcolm: Yes, it sounds are like shuffling you off into one of the back rooms.
Hardy: Well, I mean that the world at large would not look at it like that because, you know, being an academic editor at OUP is thought to be a good thing.
Malcolm: Very prestigious.
Hardy: And I mean I can see that in a way, but it is just that I don't particularly like those subject-areas, I don't know much about them, and I don't really want to know much about them.
Malcolm: And it leaves you in no position to make any trouble.
Hardy: What?
Malcolm: It leaves you in no position to make any trouble, like publish any interesting books.
Hardy: Well exactly, I mean yes. It takes me out of General Books where I was doing the sorts of things which perhaps he didn't feel particularly warm about. But anyway, why was I saying all that?
Malcolm: Oh this is all fascinating.
Hardy: Anyway, yes, I know why I was saying it: one of the consequences of being in the new job is the Richard Charkin is no longer my immediate superior.
Malcolm: Oh really?
Hardy: In the previous job, General Books, I was joint head of the Department and department heads report to Richard Charkin. In the new job, it is part of a larger group which is called Humanities and Social Sciences. There is a boss of the group called Ivon Asquith, and he is my a line manager as they call it, which means the person in the hierarchy immediately above me, so there is actually a sort of layer of insulation now between me and Richard Charkin, so that any future misdemeanours, if I were to commit any, would not come under his control in that way. I think, you know, the chances of it being repeated are small. It is not really so much the danger of being dismissed, although that is certainly why am appealing, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, that one cannot really except having such a block put on one personnel file without trying to answer back.
Malcolm: But as far as my thing goes, there is no... That does not help at all, presumably? Unless you could commission me to write it?
Hardy: Well, er, um, if, no, I mean, if it could be thought of as a more popular book on politics or sociology, then I mean I suppose you could force it into one of those categories, but it does not really belong there. But even then, you see, given the history of the book, nobody is going to take it on at OUP now, unless, as I say, Alan Ryan insists. I mean it is not going to get a fair hearing here now that it has been treated in this way.
Malcolm: You don't think there's any chance of it becoming a cause celebre with some of the pro-Ryan faction?
Hardy: Well, not unless Alan wants to make that kind of an issue of it. I mean, you know, maybe he can be goaded into doing so. I rather doubt it.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: I mean there have been...
Malcolm: Everyone's got their jobs to worry about.
Hardy: Well yes. I mean it's not... he wouldn't lose his job, but...
Malcolm: Reputation, sorry.
Hardy: Well he is not too bothered about his reputation actually, but... I don't know, but I guess he would say that although he likes the book, as I had said, although he liked the book, I mean...
Malcolm: It is not his.
Hardy: Well, it isn't a book the non-publication of which he would regard as a major loss to humanity, if you follow me. You know, I don't mean it to be rude, I mean, it is worth publishing...
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: But if, you know, if Richard had behaved like this about a book that Alan thought was of major importance, I mean if it would have been an issue... You have probably heard this story that Gilbert Ryle refused to review in Mind that book by Ernest Gellner Words and Things, which was an attack on linguistic philosophy as practised in Oxford, that is the kind of thing which might have provoked a certain amount of public jumping up and down by more liberal-minded members of the philosophical community, because that was a piece of deliberate and censorship of a book which was important.
Malcolm: Yup.
Hardy: I mean the reason he did it was that the book was actually rude rather than argumentative, and it was actually insulting about individuals.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: But I think it was a mistake.
Malcolm: Yes. Okay, well, thanks. If I can just say the other thing I want to to to say now, which is about the book itself. Erm. You said you were going to, or wanted, to take a copy of everything to read the play again.
Hardy: It is being copied at the moment.
Malcolm: It is being copied at the moment?
Hardy: It will be ready on Wednesday, so I could send it back to you on Wednesday.
Malcolm: Right. Well, on the that score I would just repeat the thing about...
Hardy: You don't want other people to see it.
Malcolm: I don't want other people to see it.
Hardy: Unless they are interested publishers.
Malcolm: Exactly.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: And about the play in particular. I have had - I just want to say this - I know the doubt that you have... Surprisingly to me, all the reports seem to have accepted that the philosophy is reasonably competent, which is something I often have doubts about, but as far as the play goes, that is where a lot of the doubts seem to me to evaporate, in the last bit.
Hardy: Mm.
Malcolm: You have probably heard something like this from me before, but I have been struggling away with this for years, and it has become a kind of... my whole life is now mortgaged to it.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: It is a kind of nightmare-folly.
Hardy: Yes. Done
Malcolm: But every time I have had doubts about it and I have often had doubts about it, not just about the validity of the whole mortgaging business, but the actual philosophy itself, every time I have thought about it and I have come back to that idea of that play, the atomic pun and all that follows from it, that is when I know that I have had... Every time I have come back to that, it has restored my faith and has said: no, this is the most important idea that I will ever have.
Hardy: Yup.
Malcolm: And in the last few days, since this has all blown up, the same thing has happened again. I have been through a pretty black phase as you can imagine.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: But just yesterday I had a long think about it, and I thought about this play and about the ideas in it, and, and, I know that that is good. I mean I may not have done it right, and I actually want to say something that may sound preposterous, but I feel convinced, that in there, somewhere - I won't say I know it - but I believe what I may have come up with is the greatest piece of philosophical imagery since Plato's Cave Simile, or something like that. I believe I might have done that.
Hardy: Uhuh?
Malcolm: And while I carry on believing that, I cannot, you know, I cannot get away from it.
Hardy: That is right.
Malcolm: And I re-read it last night, the last section of the book, and I can see why there are a lot of doubts and all the rest of it. There is a lot that is wrong with it, but I just want to explain now, because the original play was the three acts of the Electra story as re-written, and interspersed between the acts, and introduced by, and finished off by these two modern commentators who between the acts would discuss the implications of the various stages in the argument/drama. And when I came to do it this was very difficult: the whole thing was illuminated - the technicalities of the play are hinted at - but in the original play, above the stage was suspended an electric model of the carbon atom, with lights which illuminated the characters on stage in the various ways; it can all be done. That was the original script, and in turning the whole thing into the dialogue, the last and perhaps most difficult part was trying to put that vision into the text of the conversation between the two men.
Hardy: Mm.
Malcolm: And firstly of course I could not do all the stage directions, I had to use the guy's bedsit as a kind of theatre, and I thought that it was a rather brilliant stroke to pull the model idea out, although it doesn't quite conjure up the image of the actual stage play, but it is quite clever, I thought, the guy in bringing out his model. And the other thing was that I had to rewrite the commentary between Cause and Effect between the various Acts, and all the stuff that was the explanation, if you like, of the play would have just been repetition. Perhaps I should have done that, but it would have been repeating points that had been made throughout the text, so what has gone in there, I can see now, is a bit of a botch-up and a muddle and it is perhaps not terribly clear what I am getting at.
Hardy: Yes, that is one of the problems I think, yes. That is why I want to read it again, because it might become clearer.
Malcolm: Yup. Also it was done in a rush, because I was really anxious to get the thing finished, so I have not done it justice and it needs more work and I'm thinking, just for my own benefit, of going away to spend more time on the book now.
Hardy: Oh really?
Malcolm: I am not going to do the word-processor thing, but I shall just carry on doing the improvements, a sort of Sellotape-and-string job that I think is necessary, but in particular that last part... The way I have tried to write the play into the text is not right, not finished, not ready.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: If you can bear this in mind and try to concentrate on the play itself.
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: As I say, I have tried not to spell out too clearly the implications of the play, because spelling things out often makes them sound banal, but I leave the audience to try to work that out... But as I say, if you can just concentrate specifically on the play's ideas, and do a little thinking of your own, and perhaps not pay too much mind to the bits of commentary that I have stuck between them...
Hardy: Yes, well, I will certainly do my best... I have been... Obviously you may be right about the importance of what you have achieved in that play. I mean, I don't think any of the three of us who have yet to read it have seen the point if that is the case.
Malcolm: Yes. Well maybe if... Maybe I should get it back into the play form and send it to Alan Ryan and then see what he said. If he came to see the significance of it I am sure he might get a bit more excited about it.
Hardy: So you have not got it in the previous form?
Malcolm: Well, I expect I have, yes, but I would probably want to rewrite it anyway.
Hardy: Yes. It sounds more and more as though it should be on a word-processor really, but obviously that is an expense and a complication. One thing I would say though, in response to what you have been saying just now, is that none of us have asked you to cut the play out.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: I mean we have all said we are puzzled about it, but we have not made it one of the conditions for resubmission that the play should be eliminated.
Malcolm: Yes, that is true.
Hardy: So we are prepared, as it were, to accept that for you it is an indispensable part of the book.
Malcolm: Yes, but I was hoping that the play... That is the thing for me, the idea, that vision, that image at the end overcomes any doubts that one may have about the validity of the philosophy of the rest of the book. Once you see it all adds up into that play, and the power of the sort of solutions and suggestions that it offers, that to me is what makes the whole thing important. And if Alan Ryan and yourself could come to see that, then he might think that it was of vital importance that this was published. I mean I think it is, but then, I wrote it. It was the power of the play that I was depending on for that kind of crucial belief.
Hardy: Yup. I mean, yes, fine. It is possible I may come to share your view to some extent. I should perhaps mention that, and this I say without any kind of disrespect to you, because I don't think your book is an instance of it, but one gets terribly cynical as a publisher, or can get very cynical because you do get very frequent submissions from people who believe that they have somehow seen past and through to some new approach or solutions to the problems of the world in some sense or another.
Malcolm: Yup.
Hardy: It may be philosophical, economic, it may be whatever, you know, literally about one or two typescripts a week, which if only the world would read and understand...
Malcolm: ...the world would be saved, yes.
Hardy: Exactly. So one develops a kind of resistance to books for which large claims of that kind are made, even though every now and then there is one for which they are merited, of course.
Malcolm: Yes.
Hardy: That is just the background you have to bear in mind.
Malcolm: Yes. The ultimate opposite of that quite understandable reaction is, of course, the academic philosophers who spend their time writing things about such arcane and obscure non-claims that they end up saying nothing of any value whatsoever to anyone.
Hardy: That is true, I think, yes, a lot of the time, although philosophy has... By
Malcolm: Don't quote me on that to Alan.
Hardy: While Alan, I think, is less guilty of that than many. I mean he is pretty down-to-earth. But I think philosophy in general, at least some parts of it, are getting, with relief, a bit more down-to-earth than they have been in the past, particularly in the area of morals and politics.
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: And obviously philosophy of language and linguistics and stuff is getting more and more abstruse all the time, but that does not come into your book really.
Malcolm: Ah, it does at a certain level.
Hardy: It does at a more straightforward level, but you don't, as it were, tackle that kind of quantifier-shift stuff and all that rubbish.
Malcolm: Again that is a point at the end that is implicit rather than explicit. The whole point of the play is to have the ideas expressed by actual people, with actual swords, and actual blood, in front of an actual audience...
Hardy: Yes.
Malcolm: ...where you have got an actual model, and actual statues being smashed to pieces at the end. There are points about linguistic philosophy being made, but they are not to on the surface, so to speak.
Hardy: Right.
Malcolm: Right. Well, that is all I have got to say really.
Hardy: Okay, well shall I get in touch with you when I know what has happened on Tuesday? It may be on Tuesday... it may be that I shan't hear the decision until Wednesday, but anyway I will let you know.
Malcolm: Yes, I would like to know the decision when you hear it, yes please.
Hardy: Okay. And I will also send you back your typescript, obviously.
Malcolm: Thanks, and if there is, as I say, anything I can do to... If you can think of anything, the letter-writing possibility, but if there are other possibilities of things I could do that would help...
Hardy: That is very kind of you, I will think on.
Malcolm: And any kind of stunt, yes, okay... and it is tomorrow morning?
Hardy: Tomorrow morning at quarter to to ten.
Malcolm: Good luck.
Hardy: Thank you very much. Thanks for ringing. Bye-bye.
Malcolm: Cheers.
Malcolm: Henry, hello... Even the phone is jinxed!
Hardy: What?
Malcolm: Even the phone is jinxed.
Hardy: Yes, I'm afraid so, yes.
Malcolm: Both of these phonecalls have been cut off.
Hardy: It is probably your phone... no, it is probably our phone, actually.
Malcolm: It is yours, yes.
Hardy: This is simply to make a simple request of you, since you said that if there was anything you could do...
Malcolm: Mm.
Hardy: Erm, if you have the facility and the will to make a photocopy of the letter that you received from Richard Charkin, and send it first-class to arrive here tomorrow morning, that might be useful to me.
Malcolm: Ah, certainly. I am in fact in the middle of composing a letter to you.
Hardy: You are?
Malcolm: Yes, so I shall send them both.
Hardy: Okay, fine.
Malcolm: Right, yes. As long as they get to the sorting office by this evening, they tend to get there alright... Oh, except it's Oxford isn't it... I'll do my best anyway.
Hardy: Sussex to Oxford can be a problem, but anyway, have a shot.
Malcolm: Okay.
Hardy: Thank you very much.
Malcolm: Right.
Hardy: Bye.
Malcolm: Cheers.
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Go/return 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 Statement of Claim, to the Evidence (red, green) file index, to the Witnesses (blue, yellow) file index, to the Chancery Court Judgment, to the Appeal Court Judgment, to the Case History, to the Case papers index, or to The Remedy + options.
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