Bookend
Bookbuyer
Novels about the publishing trade are mostly set in. the United States, since not even the promiscuous imagination of a bestseller writer could weave lucrative fantasies around the British book trade. Nevertheless it has to be said that every publisher's seasonal list includes one or two books that are only seeing the light of day after battles have been fought and perilous problems overcome.
Secker and Warburg, for instance, are publishing next month The Mind of Adolf Hitler, the text of Walter Langer's confidential report to the American Secret Service during the last war on Hitler's state of mental health and deductions to be drawn from it about his future behaviour and the conduct of the war. Described as a ' psycho-history ' of Hitler, it has only now, one presumes, been released for publication. The interesting thing about it, which isn't mentioned within the covers ot the book, is that the Report as printed does not tally with the one actually delivered to American Intelligence in 1942. New paragraphs have been inserted, and emphases changed. The distinguished historian who read the MS for Seekers attacked it vigorously on these grounds. He may also have pointed out that Langer's conclusions about the nature of Hitler's perversion were already in circulation as a rumour in Central Europe in 1938: although it would be fair to add that Langer had to rely on what gossip he could pick up and then assemble his 'psycho-history' like a detective story. But what lies behind Seeker's decision not to reveal the differences between Langer's original Report and the present compilation?
Another book — not yet completed — which has already caused objections to be raised is the edition of Vita SackvilleWest's letters now being prepared by her son Nigel Nicolson. It reveals that their author eloped to Paris with a bride of six months: not in itself a particularly devastating exposure. But who might this bride be? Bookbuyer doesn't know but, considering that the objections were raised by Quentin Bell, and that Virginia Woolf and the Mistress of Sissinghurst were the closest of friends, can make a fairly shrewd guess. Nigel Nicolson may well be taking a gentlemanly revenge for Virginia Woolf's Orlando in which the couple with difficulty distinguish their right sex.
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