Dear Mr Hardy,
Thank you for your letter and enclosure of 16th November. As you say, Clifford Chance's letter of 6/7 comes as no surprise, but I am rather amused by the series of Freudian slips in its action title, which should read Andrew Malcolm vs. the Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford. All references to 'The Press' were struck out by the court long ago, literally on Day One of the proceedings.
Your letter again dumbfounds me, not least because of its final paragraph's bizarre echo of our last meeting, in court on 14th March 1990, when, forgive me, I admit I did form just the faintest impression that you were, literally and otherwise, turned against me and the book [my trial cross-examination of him].
I am also again surprised to find myself replying to you, and am doing so with as much dispassion as I can muster in order, again, to seek the answers to certain simple factual questions which are puzzling me, questions which mainly concern the extent of your knowledge of and involvement in the conduct of the litigation. Perhaps I have been making some false assumptions.
1. When, in the first hour of the trial, on 12th March 1990, Oxford attempted to spring the surprise "Henry Hardy had no authority to bind the university to a contract" defence on me and you were re-amending your witness statement accordingly, had anyone (their lawyers? your own solicitor?) explained to you the implications for you of what was being attempted? Did you understand the judge's explanation to me of what was going on? Has anyone ever explained to you since? [He personally would have been bankrupted.]
2. Have you read a court transcript of your evidence of 14th and 15th March 1990? [Click]
3. Have you read Gavin Lightman's trial judgment and do you understand the meaning of his conclusion at 9D? [The key quote was: "As Mr Hardy told me, the whole episode, and in particular the disciplinary action, had a traumatic effect upon him, and I regret I can only think that it also had a traumatic effect on his recollection. I certainly cannot accept his evidence on this matter."]
4. Were you informed about the university's various costs claims against me after the trial? [They stood at £25,712.99.]
5. Did you read Sir Roger Elliott's letter in The Bookseller of 1st June 1990? Did you perhaps write an unpublished letter of your own? Two letters of mine did not appear.
6. Were you informed that between the trial and the appeal I received two anonymous packages of new evidence confirming, inter alia, that Making Names was approved at the delegates meeting of 23rd July 1985? [Click for the Cambridge and Adrasteia packages.]
7. Were you aware that in an invited statement in the Court of Appeal, Oxford again publicly denigrated the book? (They later admitted that they weren't in fact in possession of a copy.) [Click for Mustill LJ, page 43]
8. Have you read the Court of Appeal judgment or, indeed, any of the other judgments in the case, e.g. Justice Morritt's comments about your missing telephone notes? [Awaiting transcription]
9. Did you know that at the damages assessment hearing, Oxford recruited no less than 13 'expert and independent' witnesses from every corner of the publishing industry, including CUP, Blackwells, Routledge, Macmillan, Penguins, Harper-Collins, Granada, Octopus, the Open University and the A-level board, all of whom rubbished "this unpublishable book"? (It turned out, of course, that only one of them had actually read it, and he seemed to quite like it).
10. Did you, around April/May 1991, have any communication with Dr Rosalind Hursthouse of the Open University? [Another mini-saga]
11. Did you know that in June 1991, two weeks before the assessment hearing and from the safety of the USA, the great philosopher and critic Alan Ryan filed an affidavit which concluded that the book was without any merit whatsoever, being an utterly trivial and foul-mouthed excrescence which "would has stunk without trace"?
12. Are you aware that, according to informed estimates, Oxford spent more than a quarter of a million pounds fighting the case? [Subsequently revised up to about half a million.]
13. Are you still sure that you have never deviated from your view that the book ought to have been published?
Please forgive me if I too sound as if I am continuing our cross-examination scene, but your letters raise so many mysteries, I thought I should try to settle at least these merely factual ones. I realise that you may not wish to answer any of the questions and that some of them may strain your memory, whose fallibility is, as you say, already well documented. However, if you can remember, your answers might help to complete some of the unfinished parts of the jigsaw puzzle. If not, no matter.
As to AKME's publicity and sales drive, I now understand that, "for Oxford-related reasons", invited reviewers are "avoiding it liked the plague". Even the printer has for similar reasons declined, reluctantly, to handle any further editions. I am sure this is very wise of them.
Yours sincerely, Andrew Malcolm
Click for the next letter in this correspondence.
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 the Damages assessment, to the Settlement agreement.
Return to the Malcolm vs. Oxford I (1984-92) Index, to the Malcolm vs. Oxford II (2001-02) Index, to the blurb for Making Names, to its reviews, to The Remedy, or to the SITE INDEX.