*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. Case-students who wish to retrace the exact steps taken by the Trial and Appeal Courts should therefore now proceed straight to the next item in the original files. - A. M.

Malcolm: (very croaky) I'm surviving but only just, I have got a heavy cold at the moment.

Hardy: Oh right. Sorry about that.

Malcolm: I'm just emerging at the same time from about six months of tunnel-vision.

Hardy: Tunnel-vision, you mean a metaphorical tunnel-vision?

Malcolm: Well, literal tunnel-vision half the time. Erm, I have got something to send back to you, a new version of Making Names.

Hardy: To Bion, not to me.

Malcolm: To meon, not to you?

Hardy: To Nicola Bion, she is...

Malcolm: Oh, to Nicola Bion, yes, I see what you mean, sorry. Well, I was going to say I could send two copies, one to you and one to her. Would that be valuable?

Hardy: Erm...

Malcolm: One thing to say is that I have had it photocopied, all very nicely on very thin paper, so it is bound up nicely and it's rather nicer to read than before.

Hardy: Is it retyped?

Malcolm: Yup, just about 95 percent of it is retyped. Probably not to your satisfaction, but...

Hardy: Well I am sure it will be alright. No, I mean, I think if it comes in to Nicola and she looks at it or takes advice and everybody is happy and it goes through, then there isn't any point in my reading it again unless you have something special you want to ask.

Malcolm: Ye--yes.

Hardy: If it is a question of some further problems, then I suppose I might become involved again. I mean, I am anxious not to become involved again both for selfish and for altruistic reasons. For selfish reasons in that I am very busy and have plenty of other things to do, and for altruistic reasons in that my involvement in the past has produced certain, er, negative vibrations, as you know, and if it can go through without my assistance, that is fine.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: If you have already got a second copy and want to send it to me, as it were unofficially...

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: That will be fine, but I'm sure that that should be the way you should do it.

Malcolm: Well, I would like quite like to... One thing I thought is that if it is going to different readers, if there are more copies around, then it won't have to wait while someone spends a month reading it. What will happen?

Hardy: What will happen?

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: I imagine, erm, I mean, I will discuss it Nicola when she comes in. I think she will want to talk to me about it. I imagine that it will be sent to at least one reader... Now let me just think whether it will be sent to the same or to a different one... I will have to look at the reports again. I imagine it would probably be sent at least to one of the same readers, and possibly to a new one, erm, I am not quite sure.

Malcolm: Would it go to Alan Ryan again, do you think?

Hardy: It might do, er, um, at least it would probably only go to him if there was some disagreement. That is to say, if the reader's report, if the outside reader's report was favourable, then I don't think there would be any point in him reading it again, because we would just carry on.

Malcolm: Mm.

Hardy: If it was unfavourable to any serious degree... I mean very often at this stage one gets a broadly favourable report but some specific final tinkering suggestions. And you know, in that case you would probably be able to sort that out. If there is any substantial reservation still, then it might be worth suggesting to him that he looks at it again, because we might be presented more with a kind of ideological problem than an authorial one, if you see what I mean.

Malcolm: (faintly) Mm.

Hardy: In which case he would be able to rule against the reader, if necessary.

Malcolm: (faintly) Mm.

Hardy: I think one really has to see what the circumstances are.

Malcolm: Yes. Well, it is quite a lot changed from what they read before.

Hardy: In the ways that we discussed?

Malcolm: I think so, yes, and... It is a lot shorter. I mean, I have cut more than I thought possible. All the chapters have been rewritten to some extent, all but the last two; seven and eight are pretty much the same, but some of them... the morals chapter is completely re-written, because that was the least satisfactory, and they are all tightened up a great deal, I think.

Hardy: Uhuh.

Malcolm: And the last, the play at the end I have had a complete go at, and I hope now it will at least become apparent what I am driving at. I shall say in an accompanying letter that I still regard it as something of a first draft.

Hardy: Oh God!

Malcolm: Well, it is only twenty pages, the actual play, so...

Hardy: Yup.

Malcolm: It is something I shall permanently want to struggle with, but at least I hope there is now enough there to be clear what I'm driving at, which there did not seem to be before, from your readers' reactions.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: So that part will go on being worked on, you know.

Hardy: Right.

Malcolm: But I wondered whether you might be interested to see that, and I would like to hear your reactions. It would be nice if someone suddenly sort of twigged what I was doing and said: "Yes, this is good."

Hardy: Yes, the difficulty here is that I have no official role in the matter any more, as you know.

Malcolm: Well, if I did send two, I mean I would not want to send them both together anyway, for safety reasons, so I would send one to Nicola and one to you.

Hardy: Yes.

Malcolm: And then you could get together and pass them around to the various readers or whatever.

Hardy: Please do do that.

Malcolm: And you could have a look at it first. If you do that, one thing I would like you to do if you would, is to send back... You took a copy of the original version.

Hardy: I did.

Malcolm: And I think you have still got a copy of it.

Hardy: I have got a copy of the original typescript.

Malcolm: Yes, but you have also got a copy of the revised first two chapters haven't you?

Hardy: I think so, yes.

Malcolm: Because I have done a small amount to them since as well, so if you could send it all back when you get the new one, then there will be nothing... I don't like the idea of inferior versions still floating around.

Hardy: Oh I see, yes. I did actually pay for the total cost of the photocopy myself.

Malcolm: Oh did you?

Hardy: So strictly speaking it is my property.

Malcolm: Okay...

Hardy: I don't know if you want to buy it from me? About £30.

Malcolm: Well, I, er...

Hardy: Actually, I don't really think that...

Malcolm: I'd rather you...

Hardy: I think the thing is that I would like to hang on to it, at least until we have seen the new version, because one of the things we will be asking is what changes you have made, and unless we have got the original to compare it with, it will be difficult to see.

Malcolm: That's true, that's true.

Hardy: I can let you have it back in the fullness of time. I mean I don't want to preserve it as a kind of archaeological exhibit or anything like that.

Malcolm: Yes, well as long as you don't... I mean some of it, having read it back, of course I found it rather embarrassing, as usual. I shall probably find some of this embarrassing when I read this back.

Hardy: Well we may not need to refer to it. I mean, if the new one seems fine in its own terms, then probably one would not refer to it.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: But if there are some bits about which one feels it to be not as good in the way that the old one is, then we will want to just refresh our memory and see if it has changed at all.

Malcolm: Yes.

Hardy: So I think we had better hang on to it for the moment.

Malcolm: Okay, well just for that reason then, but once that has been done...

Hardy: Then you can have it, yes, or I can destroy it, whichever you prefer.

Malcolm: Yes, one or t'other. Right. Could you possibly put me through to Nicola Bion, perhaps I had better speak to her.

Hardy: Yes, I will have a go.

Malcolm: Thanks. Did you pass on the revised first chapters to her?

Hardy: I did. I think she has read them, erm, so you can ask her about that... 4242... (transfers)

Malcolm: Is that Nicola Bion?

Bion: Yes, hello.

Malcolm: Hello. I have not spoken to you before, my name is Andrew Malcolm.

Bion: Hello.

Malcolm: Hello. Yes, are you fully in the picture of this Making Names book?

Bion: Yes I am, and I read the revised two chapters.

Malcolm: Aha. Yes.

Bion: I gather from Henry that you have practically completed the rest.

Malcolm: Yes. I am just putting it all together now. It is quite a relief. And it is quite a bit different in all respects from what he saw before. I have done a lot more work on it than I thought I was going to do, and some of it is drastically changed, but all of it is changed to some extent, and in fact I have done a small amount of fiddling around with the two chapters that I sent you since I sent them to you, so I would now like to send you the whole lot.

Bion: That is going to feel very strange for you (laughing), actually finishing the revision after all this time. It has been a bit of a business hasn't it?

Malcolm:It has, it has. You have no idea what sort of a business it has been. I would just say one thing now, that is on the last section. It is in nine chapters now, the last of which contains a play, a piece of climactic imagery that seemed to to confuse everybody last time. The readers' reports seemed all to like to varying extents the earlier work, the philosophical dialogues, but they were rather mystified when it came to this final chapter, which for me is what it is all about. If the final part does not work, the whole thing fails. And I can see why they were mystified, I mean it wasn't very good and it perhaps is still not very good, but I have rewritten it completely.

Bion: Right.

Malcolm: It is only short, the play is only about 18 pages in fact, and it is something that I shall be working on all the time. So I would like you to regard it as still a first draft, if you know what I mean.

Bion: Mm.

Malcolm: But I just hope it now has enough coherence to reveal at least what it is about and what it is trying to do. The trouble is that I am trying to bite off more than I can chew in a sense, and my literary competence is probably not up to it, but I am working on it.

Bion: But you obviously feel that it is crucial to the book?

Malcolm: Yes, in a way, I mean in every way. So if you can make allowances - I shall attach a note - for this, and regard particularly the last part of something that I am working on all the time. The thing is, having just been six months at this I cannot really step back and do any more to it at the moment. I am absolutely saturated with it, so I have got to go away and have a break and then come back to it.

Bion: Okay, fine. Well, I look forward to seeing it. It probably will take a few weeks to read and get it approved.

Malcolm: Yes, but please be as quick as possible. I mean it took six months last time, I think, or nine months.

Bion: It won't take that, because we are familiar with the book and the problems of the previous discussions and so on, but if two or three people read it it will take a few weeks.

Malcolm: Yes.

Bion: But it won't take more than that.

Malcolm: Right. Well what I said to Henry was that I have had several photocopies made, on a rather nice, thin paper, and it has all come out very nicely. I am not very brilliant on the typing side of things, but it is much better than the other one was. And I could send two. I was thinking of sending you one and sending Henry one and then he could have a look at the bits that he might want to see.

Bion: Good, yes.

Malcolm: And then he can pass it on, so you will have two copies which might speed up the process.

Bion: That would be helpful actually.

Malcolm: Yup?

Bion: Yes, and if you do that, because obviously he would like to see it simultaneously, and then he will hand it on to me.

Malcolm: Yes, I mean, I can even do a third copy if necessary.

Bion: No, I should think the two is sufficient actually, yes.

Malcolm: Yes? Right. And you are at the same address?

Bion: Yes, that's fine. So you'll be sending it straight away?

Malcolm: Well, tomorrow I think.

Bion: Okay, so it probably won't get here until Monday. Where are we, Thursday, okay.

Malcolm: And it's Nicola B-i-o-n?

Bion: That's right.

Malcolm: Okay, well expect a lumpy package within the next few days.

Bion: Okay, well it's good to speak to you. Thanks very much for phoning. I look forward to seeing it.

Malcolm: Okay, I look forward to sending it!

Bion: Thanks, 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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