Low life
Goodies
Jeffrey Bernard
The very peak of culture, the greatest literary event of each spring is the publication of the Weidenfeld and Nicolson New Titles Spring List. This impoverished but tremendously imaginative publishing house, only barely ticking over thanks to a well deserved Arts Council grant, positively bombards the book lover with a feast of literary goodies yet again and, reading the new list, my mouth watered and the adrenalin flowed at the thought of the pleasures to come. I can hardly wait for Sir Harold Wilson's The Chariot of Israel. As their masterly blurb says, 'Sir Harold is in a unique position to write about the relationship between Zionism and British politics in this century . . .' Quite so, the position being, of course, a brandy in the left hand held close to the body with the right hand extended to accept a cheque from Lord W.
There's also another treat from HenrY Kissinger and a book by Woodrow Wyatt containing his collected thoughts. Surprisingly, the Wyatt thoughts cover as many as 148 pages. -There is one sad note though. The eagerly awaited treatise on gardening by Roddy Llewellyn has not appeared in the list. When I heard that he'd been given a £3,500 advance for this, my heart skipped, but it seems he hasn't turned up with the goods. This is probably due to what we hacks call a 'blockage'. What happens is the writer gets his money, usually for an idea he's come up with in desperation at a cocktail party at the very sight of a millionaire publisher, and then, faced with a blank sheet of paper in his typewriter, he finds himself powerless to operate the machine and sits back to ponder on the wonder of being an author before quickly making his way to the nearest watering hole.
Sadly, not everyone views the Weidenfeld list with quite my enthusiasm. One lady employed to scribble for the Sunday Times actually stamps her tiny foot when the new list appears and screams, should have slept with him when I could have.' That's probably sheer envy and I expect she'll be stamping her foot even harder this spring when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Antonia Fraser. Antonia's come up with another cert best seller, a new Jernima Shore mystery. The first one, Quiet As A Nun, was published in 1977 and was an immediate best-seller and television serial. This latest, A Splash of Red, it's rumoured Will later be filmed and then, with the deserved Arts Council grant, be performed by the English National Opera Company.
One that caught my eye in the Arthur Barker section of the list is a football novel called The Boss by Jimmy Greaves and Norman Gillen The blurb explains that, 'This gripping novel moves compellingly between the bedroom and the boardroom and reaches a thrilling end-of-season climax in the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.' Of course, I don't know one end of a football from the other, but I must say I'd rather have my end-of-season climax in the bedroom or boardroom.
But the Spring list does make me a little sad. It's all very well for some to snipe and stamp their feet, but it makes me feel utterly useless. There's all these people writing good books and having them beautifully produced and just what the hell am I working on? Well, Susan Raven and Alison Weir's book, Women In History: 35 Centuries of Feminine Achievement, gave me the idea of writing 35 Centuries of Ballbreaking, but I couldn't get an advance. Apart from that, I'm starting work — without an Arts Council grant — on a book of Lester Piggott anecdotes and jokes for an extremely shrewd publishers called Robson Books. This is just my mark having once failed to get a job as a packer at Weidenfeld and Nicolson on account of my low IC) and diminished responsibility. I shall plug on though. I'm sure there's a book in me somewhere trying hard not to get out and at least there's one consolation in not ending up on thousands of coffee tables. That's ending up under one.
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