Brutal frankness
Sir: I am sure that Sir Robert Rhodes James is correct in writing that he ghosted all the most interesting sections of the late Lord Kilmuir's memoirs (`Night of the long quills', 11 July). But he is not correct in his account of their serialisation.
I was at that time editor-in-chief of the Sunday Telegraph. When I was offered the ghosted version I contracted through George Weidenfeld to buy the serialisation rights for £5,000. I had known Kilmuir since 1938 when we partnered each other in a tennis tournament in Monte Carlo. There was no auction. That was the price I was offered and for which I signed. They were like most political memoirs — trying to
establish the author's place in history and thus excruciatingly tedious. They differed, however, in brutal frankness about his col- leagues (no doubt written in by Sir Robert) which is the leaven that causes editors to be interested.
A few months later I was sent the manuscript for publication and found all the leaven had been removed. I was so angry that I threw it back at the publishers and said I would not pay a penny. I was even angrier when the serialisation was resold to the Sunday Times, also for £5,000, but with all the leaven restored.
It is not for me to discuss the dates of the various objections to the text raised by Sir Burke Trend, secretary to the Cabinet, as was his constitutional right. But I am quite sure that Lord Home, at that time Prime Minister, had no part in it. He had no con- stitutional right to be 'adamant', to 'wish passages to be deleted', nor would it have been in character for the greatest gentle- man who has adorned that office this cen- tury. (He would never have employed Sir Robert to make his own memoirs interest- ing.)
Hartwell
36 Broadway, London SW1
Previous page
