No ghost
From Mr Peter James Sir: I hate to sound ungrateful for the flat- tery he lavishes on me, but D.J. Taylor's piece on those 'who really write the nation's bestselling books' CA true ghost story', 21 October) threatens me with the kiss of death. His purpose in descending into the `underworld' of London publishing and dragging me from the darkness is not to exalt me, as he pretends, but to fling mud at authors whose books I edit.
It is true that rewriting has always been one of my specialities, but if I am 'the most accomplished rewrite artist in London', as Mr Taylor extravagantly claims, he needs to confront the fact that I have not rewritten a book for more than two years and have not done so for the Orion Group — with whom he rightly but insinuatingly says I have `good relations' — for 15 years.
Mr Taylor has ensured that authors who thank me in their prefaces now seem to be confessing that they can't write. Suddenly, thanks to The Spectator, they have ceased to be eminent historians and have become `supposedly reputable' and 'supposedly `serious'. This is not just irresponsible jour- nalism, it is damaging: the Taylorian kiss has in turn transformed my name into a prefatory kiss of death for my authors quite a number of whom, funnily enough, have contributed to your magazine.
The truth is that I edit, and that I can't in any intelligible sense be called a ghost-writ- er, When Alistair Home (Macmillan), Roy Jenkins (his memoirs), Robert Skidelsky (John Maynard Keynes), Flora Fraser (The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline) and Simon Sebag Montefiore (Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin), to name just a few of my authors and their principal titles, present their manuscripts to me, I will hunt for weaknesses, I will act as devil's advocate and guardian of scholarship and I will make stylistic suggestions. But I have never rewrit- ten a line of theirs. And those whose books I have rewritten remain in the fullest sense sole authors of their own works.
Every author needs editing. In fact, I can confidently state that it is impossible to write a book that requires no editing — a phenomenon which Mr Taylor effortlessly demonstrates in his own 2,000 words, dis- playing as he does an endearing appetite for mixing metaphors and a talent for mani- fold misconceptions, not least his achieve- ment in confusing me, down there in the chthonic gloom, with the distinguished Peter James who writes the ghost stories. For my usual fee I will gladly scrutinise his future productions. With a little effort, he will find that my fax number is not as 'close- ly guarded' as he claims.
Peter James
London W14 From Mr Francis King
Sir: In his entertaining article, D.J. Taylor exaggerates when he says that I 'had a hand in a whole series of late-period L.P. Hartley novels'. In fact, I assisted with only one. Ailing and sometimes confused, my old friend had produced a number of often conflicting drafts for his Poor Clare. It was my task to construct from these drafts a coherent narrative, merely by selection and amalgamation and an occasional linking sentence or two. I was happy to do this, since in his prime he had repeatedly given me valuable advice about my own work. Francis King
London W8
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