Jeremy Lewis - Life and Times of Allen Lane

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Jeremy Lewis worked in publishing for much of his life after leaving Trinity College, Dublin, in 1965. He was a director of Chatto & Windus for ten years, and the Deputy Editor of the London Magazine from 1990 to 1994. He has been the Commissioning Editor of the Oldie since 1997. He has written two highly praised volumes of autobiography, Playing for Time and Kindred Spirits, and edited The Chatto Book of Office Life. His authorized biography of Cyril Connolly was published by Jonathan Cape in 1997, his life of Tobias Smollett in 2003, and he is currently working on a book about the Greene family. A Committee Member of the R. S. Surtees Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is married with two daughters and lives near Richmond Park.

The Life and Times of Allen Lane

JEREMY LEWIS

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Viking 2005
Published in Penguin Books 2006
1

Copyright Jeremy Lewis, 2005
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193665-9

To
Charles Sprawson,
intrepid swimmer and
best of friends

Allen Lanes papers, the Penguin files and Eunice Frosts papers are housed in the Library of Bristol University, and Im extremely grateful to Hannah Lowery and her colleagues in Special Collections for looking after me and answering my questions with such courtesy and efficiency; Michael Estorick and Emma Russell lent me their house in Bath while I was working in the Library, which made life even more agreeable. It was a pleasure to work again with Michael Bott at Reading University, riffling through the papers of Chatto & Windus, The Bodley Head and Jonathan Cape, and to revisit the sumptuously renovated Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where Tara Wenger and Pat Fox guided me through the labyrinth. I greatly enjoyed my sessions with Sue Bradley, who masterminds the Book Trade Lives section of the British Librarys National Sound Archive, and with Anne Bradley, the archivist at Bristol Grammar School; on a more melancholy note, John Seaton showed me round Harmondsworth in its dying days. Allen Lanes niece, Elizabeth Paton, very kindly showed me letters from her father, Richard Lane, and arranged for Tammie Gay at Penguin Australia to send me the correspondence between the two brothers. Charles Picks unpublished memoirs are a gripping read for anyone interested in publishing, and his son Martin very generously allowed me to read them. Im also very grateful to the staff of the Public Record Office, the St Brides Printing Library, Book Trust and the London Library.

My indebtedness to those who have written about Allen Lane, Penguin and publishing is reflected in the bibliography. Im particularly aware of my debt to Steve Hares Penguin Portrait: Allen Lane and the Penguin Editors 19351970 and the publications of the Penguin Collectors Society, and to Nicholas Joiceys masterly essay A Paperback Guide to Progress when writing about the pre-war Penguin Specials and Penguins influence on post-war Britain.

Id like to thank the following for their recollections of Allen Lane: Peter Buckman, Judith Burnley, Peter Calvocoressi, Ian Chapman, Jerry Cinamon, Charles Clark, Margaret Clark, Jim Cochrane, Joan and Evelyn Collihole, Elizabeth Creak, Arthur Crook, John Curtis, Alun Davies, Bob Davies, Ian Dickson, Lord Gibson, Ben Glazebrook, Fay Godwin, Martyn Goff, Gordon Graham, Graham C. Greene, John Gross, Betty Hartel, John Hitchin, Richard Hoggart, Lord Holme, Lord Hutchinson QC, Robert Hutchison, Malcolm Kelley, Joan Kite, John Letts, Ruari McLean, Tom Maschler, James Michie, Tony Mott, Jill Norman, Ian Norrie, Dieter Pevsner, June Pipe, James Price, Isabel Quigly, Tim Rix, Tom Rosenthal, Doug Rust, Edward and Stella Samuel, Paul Scherer, Doreen Scott, Sue Shaw, Raleigh Trevelyan, Shirley Tucker, Lord Weidenfeld and Patrick Wright.

Sara Wheeler and Geraldine Cooke urged me to get on with it during the course of a drunken party, and Im very glad I followed their advice; Isabel Quigly fanned the flames, and introduced me to some of her old Penguin colleagues. Biographers rely on other people to a shaming degree, and Im very grateful to the following for help, advice and information: Paul Addison, Iain Bain, Michael Barber, Sue Bradbury, Montagu Bream, James Chesterman, Ron Costley, Caroline Dawnay, Eric de Bellaigue, Maggie Fergusson, Christopher Foyle, Stephen Gardiner, Michael Geare, A. D. Harvey, J. C. Hall, Christopher Hawtree, Ernest Hecht, Valerie Holman, Michael Holroyd, Judy Taylor Hough, David Hughes, Lynn Hughes, Sam Humphreys, Richard Ingrams, Crispin Jackson, Andrew Kidd, Jim Knowlson, Lucy Lethbridge, Alistair McCleery, Belinda McGill, Peter Mayer, Huw Molseed, Jane Moore, John Moynihan, William Palmer, Clive Reynard, Steve Rubin, Hilary Rubinstein, Michael Sissons, Carol Smith, Jon Stallworthy, John M. Thomas, Nigel Viney, Ian Willison, Tanya Wolff and Martin Yates.

Im extremely grateful to the following for reading the typescript in part or in whole, and for their comments and suggestions: Charles Clark, Jim Cochrane, John Curtis, Fay Godwin, Steve Hare, Alistair McCleery, Tom Maschler, Clare Morpurgo, Tony Mott, Dieter Pevsner, John Rolfe, Tanya Schmoller, Christine and David Teale, and Tony Weale, who among many other good deeds saved me from attributing Maupassants Boule de Suif to Balzac at the beginning of a chapter devoted to Allen Lanes insistence on the highest editorial standards. Further howlers were deflected by Nicolas Barker (typographical matters), Eric de Bellaigue (finance) and Lord Hutchinson (the trial of Lady Chatterleys Lover, in which he played an indispensable part). My editor at Penguin, Tony Lacey, reacted with his customary gusto when I suggested the idea of a biography of Lane at an Oldie literary lunch, since when he has been exemplary in his combination of enthusiasm and shrewdness, as well as being the most convivial of men; and sifting through the photographs with his assistant, Zelda Turner, proved an exceptionally enjoyable business. Annie Lee, my copy-editor, worked at Penguin in the Tony Godwin era and provided heartening evidence of the high standards set by the firm in those days. I am grateful to Elisabeth Merriman and Fiona Allen of Penguin for their help. My agent, Gillon Aitken, whose experience of publishing goes back to the Allen Lane era, has proved once again a sagacious and welcome source of advice; and I am very flattered that Douglas Matthews has once again undertaken the index. I am deeply indebted to Simon Brooke of Snake Eyes Computers, who was always at hand when I pressed the wrong button and the screen went blank.