Malcolm: Hello, is that Mr John Cordy?
Cordy: Yes.
Malcolm: Excuse me for phoning you out of the blue like this. I don't know if my name will mean anything to you, it's Andrew Malcolm.
Cordy: It doesn't ring a bell at the moment.
Malcolm: It doesn't ring a bell? Can I just explain what this is about. I gather you used to work for Oxford University Press but no longer do, is that right?
Cordy: Uhuh.
Malcolm: I also have been told that in 1985, if this is not going too far back for your memory, you used to take the Minutes of Delegates' meetings, is that right?
Cordy: Yes.
Malcolm: Was that true, if I may ask, for the whole year, or was it just now and again?
Cordy: I think it was pretty regularly, unless I was on holiday.
Malcolm: I see. The next question is probably even more difficult for your memory, but would you be likely to remember things that happened at particular meetings in any sort of detail?
Cordy: No, I'm afraid I wouldn't.
Malcolm: And would you have kept any papers you made at those meetings, or notes or anything?
Cordy: No.
Malcolm: You haven't. I'll just explain...
Cordy: Bells are beginning to ring now, but carry on.
Malcolm: One particular general question that you might remember - this is about a General book that was considered at one of the meetings in that year. First question: I gather that every book that came to be considered had a sort of Note, an agenda paper, with reviews of the book and comments made by readers and so on on it...
Cordy: Yes.
Malcolm: ...and that as well as that, for the General as opposed to Academic books, there was a list of titles drawn up with just the title and author. Then at the meeting the decision to, say, approve or reject or whatever it was, would be written on that list and then get reported back, is that correct?
Cordy: That's roughly the procedure, yes.
Malcolm: So there were definitely lists of General books that would have come to those meetings?
Cordy: Yes.
Malcolm: And where, as far as you know, would those lists still be kept?
Cordy: Well I think they'd be filed in the Press, probably along with the Minutes.
Malcolm: I see. Is there anywhere else that you can think of that would hold them?
Cordy: No. I wouldn't think so because they were all confidential papers. There wouldn't be a lot of copies lying around.
Malcolm: Yes. But anyway, when you were taking the Minutes - this is a detailed question - you'd have, say, the list of General Books in front of you and each one would come up in turn and be discussed perhaps and then you'd mark on the list 'approved' or 'deferred' or 'rejected' or whatever it was, is that more or less what you did?
Cordy: Well that's certainly what I did with the Academic books. With the General books, on the whole the list was passed en bloc, as it were. I think the note in the Minute would normally say something to the effect that the proposals tabled were approved; they wouldn't go into the Minutes one-by-one. But you're worrying about a case where there was some difficulty I think, aren't you?
Malcolm: That's right.
Cordy: There probably would have been something other than the conventional Minute then... Yes, the Minute is more likely to have read in that sort of case that the proposals tabled were approved with the exception of so-and-so, which was deferred for further consideration, or something like that.
Malcolm: Yes, that's right. Right, well that's very helpful. Obviously you won't remember a particular title or whether it appeared on a list for a particular meeting, I should imagine that's rather difficult... I'll just try you with it: the title of the book was Making Names, it was a philosophical text for a general readership, if that's not a contradiction in terms and, I believe, it came before the Delegates at a meeting on 23rd July, which I think is the Summer Vacation meeting, of 1985; and it was being canvassed in particular by Alan Ryan, who was then a Delegate. Does any of that ring a bell with you at all, can you remember Alan Ryan canvassing such a book?
Cordy: (pause) I'm afraid I can't. Particularly at that meeting there would be dozens and dozens of proposals.
Malcolm: Yes, yes, I realise that it's pretty impossible to expect you to remember that... But another professor of philosophy David Pears was there and he's told me that he remembers it.
Cordy: Well that's a good effort!
Malcolm: Yes, but you don't remember a particular discussion of that book?
Cordy: No, I'm very sorry, I don't.
Malcolm: But you're clear that if it had come, it would have appeared on a list and the decision would have been marked off on it in some way, whatever the decision was?
Cordy: Yes, I think that's pretty clear.
Malcolm: Yes. Well, if I may now come clean, not that I haven't been coming clean, but...
Cordy: I've been remembering now, it was something I read in the paper recently.
Malcolm: Yes, well there's been a battle over this ...
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, to the Appeal Court Judgment, to Malcolm's Points of Claim (the first item in the damages series), to the Damages assessment, or to the Settlement agreement.
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