Book marks
I hear that Philip Agee's controversial account of the CIA, Inside the Company, has -at last found an American publisher. The book appeared in Britain as a Penguin earlier this year and has since sold a further 40,000 copies through Penguin's Canadian subsidiary. But the precedent of Victor Marchetti's Cult of Intelligence — over which New York publishers Knopf and the CIA have been locked in costly legal battle for several months — has clearly inhibited a Penguin edition for America. Not just a Penguin edition either: none of the twenty-five US publishers to whom rights have been offered has dared to take the plunge. The rights have now finally gone to a little-known company called Stonehill who will publish in mid-June. With the book so widely available elsewhere in the world, it would be surprising if the CIA repeated its Marchetti machinations. Penguin could yet be kicking themselves.
Bad joke
It was perhaps inevitable, but the latest New York joke about the President concerns his reading habits: "There was a fire in President Ford's library. It burned both his books — including the one he was colouring."
Worse joke
Further north, I hear that the Canadians are sorely aggrieved at the dearth of British publishers exhibiting at the first-ever Montreal Book Fair. The caustic catchphrase going the rounds is: "The British didn't come because they didn't come last year."
Wrong cook
It was good to see Wilfred Brambell of Steptoe fame looking so well at a W. H. Allen party the other night. He is half-way through his autobiography. Was he going to fall into that old showbiz trap of not daring to upset any of his friends? "Oh bugger them," the rascally rag-and-bone man replied. "Most of them are dead anyway."
Speaking of W. H. Allen parties (do they come any better?) the publishers recently held one to launch Fanny Cradock's first novel The Lormes of Castle Rising. Needless to say, the • food was excellent. It was prepared by Robert Carrier.
No job
Sir Robert Lusy, once the well-looked-after managing director of Hutchinson, is still looking for a job. Having unsuccessfully offered his services to a number of British publishers, he is now telling friends that he wants to scout for an American house. I shall disclose the names of the interested parties in due course, space permitting.
Bad writers?
There have been feminist groups producing books, and there have been feminist books from opportunist publishers, but there.has not so far been a major feminist publishing imprint. Now there soon could be. Carmen Callil, self-employed publicist and girlabout-town, is shortly to launch Virago, a series of history, sociology, education, biography, humour and — should the right book come along — fiction. The first Virago books, which will be marketed by Quartet Books (publishers of The Joy of Sex) and are launched in September, will include The Sadeian Woman, a study of de Sade by Novelist Angela Carter; Is This Your Life? a series of essays on woman's image in the media, and Forgetting's No Excuse, an updated version of the widely praised autobiography of Mary Stott, former woman's page editor of the Guardian.
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