A Life in the Day

by Hunter Davies

  At home, Margaret was always telling me I was mumbling, asking me to repeat things, which was very annoying. Or saying to me, please, can you just not talk for ten minutes. Stop chuntering on. Let’s have some peace and quiet.

  So I was surprised when Helen Fry was interested in me. And presumably my voice. I was given a sound test, and then offered the job, but she made it clear it would take time to knock me into shape.

  In the early weeks of interviewing authors, one of the things all the producers did, while sitting behind the glass panel, would be to put their hands to their faces and open their mouths wide. This was to indicate that I should smile, especially when I was reading stuff out. I never realised how just the act of smiling, in a studio, where you are not seen, does affect the way the words come out. Listening to radio now, I can always tell when presenters are putting on their phoney smiles, to sound, well, smiley. Mariella Frostrup, though an excellent broadcaster, does seem to me to overdo the smiling, till I find myself screaming at her STOP SMILING!

  I also had a terrible habit of interrupting people, or going hmmm, yeh, hmm, when they were talking, waiting for them to pause, so I could get my oar in, which you should never do as an interviewer. You can nod and smile at an interviewee, but you must not make any mumbling sounds.

  I presented Bookshelf for three years, from 1983–6, and worked with some excellent, creative producers, such as Simon Elms, though he did drive me mad at times as he was so thorough. Unlike me. We did a feature once about Arthur Ransome and Simon insisted we rowed across Lake Coniston to an island, just to get the real sound of rowing across Coniston to get to an island. I said must we? Surely you can dub on the sound effects afterwards? But he insisted.

  I went with Simon to the USA where we did several good features, such as one about the Harry Ransom Center in Texas, which has one of the world’s best collections of literary manuscripts. And also locks of hair from famous authors.

  Back in the 1980s, BBC Radio could afford to take great pains with even the simplest little radio feature. There was a large staff in our department, which was called Archive Features, and producers were given lots of time and facilities to get things right.

  I would spend a whole day once a week interviewing three authors, usually in the studio, sometimes out on location. I liked to take at least forty minutes talking to each of them, as I was always so interested in their lives and work, which left the poor old producer with the task of getting each piece down to a maximum of ten minutes, or less, if they were adding archive footage.

  Then I would be sent a roughcut of the programme and had to write a script to go round the clips, which I did at home. Then another day was spent at BH, recording the programme. So roughly it took up at least half the week, more if there was any travelling involved.

  These days, when a BBC presenter comes to interview me at home, he or she is on her own, working the gear, with no producer present. The tape recorder is of course much smaller today, carried in a handbag, whereas in the old days you needed a Pickfords lorry. They also tend only to record what they know they are going to use, i.e. five minutes’ worth, and then they are off, rushing to the next appointment.

  It was a bit of faff and labour intensive at the time I did Bookshelf, in those good old radio days, when such care and time was always taken, but on the other hand, the quality did show, the depth and richness was apparent. I was so proud to work there, and have a proper BBC pass, which allowed you cheap food in the canteen and cheap wine in the BBC club which was over the road in Portland Place, now a posh hotel. For years after I had left Bookshelf I used to flash my BBC card when I was at football matches or abroad, hoping to get into the press box, carefully putting my finger over it so they could not see it was now years out of date.

  I hugely prefer radio to TV. In the seventies, I did do three or four TV documentaries, usually tied in with a book I was doing, such as walking along Hadrian’s Wall or George Stephenson or Beatrix Potter. I did it really to please the publisher, knowing they would be thrilled that I had secured a tie-in with a TV company, which would be great publicity for the book, but oh God, the time it used to take. For a two-part TV series on walking Hadrian’s Wall it took eight weeks, with a crew of eight. I became so bored, walking a walk I had already done and talking to people I had talked to. TV, in theory, is considered more important, attractive, more glamorous, but to me it is the more pointless, less fun, less illuminating. You are asking questions to which you already know the answers, going to places you have already been to, or the researchers have been there first and told you everything. On radio, you move more quickly, waste less time, and get more out of people.

  I loved being involved with Bookshelf, and liked all the producers. As presenter, I also had input into the programme, suggesting authors and features. The book world, after all, was one I had come to know pretty well, after all those years of being published.

  I left of my own volition. It had just become so time-consuming. I wanted to concentrate on my own books, which is my real pleasure in life. Bookshelf was a heavy commitment. I had to sign a contract each year to do the programme for thirty-three weeks, so it was hard to make other plans or other arrangements.

  By the end of the third year, I was, to my surprise, sometimes being recognised by my voice. I would be talking on the phone to a total stranger, such as complaining to someone at BT or HSBC, and they would suddenly say heh, don’t I know your voice? Are you on the radio? I was always charmed.

  I can so easily imagine the hell and inconvenience and annoyance of what it is like to be really well known, recognised by sight, rather than by your voice, which is much more subtle and discreet. I have been with enough famous people in my life, from the Beatles to star footballers, and being out with them in the street or a restaurant is horrendous. People staring, people coming up, people stopping you, people making personal comments, wanting autographs, wanting selfies, treating you like public property. The nice people, the true fans, hold back. It is almost always the nasties who push themselves upon the well known.

  The accents of my own children are interesting. Obviously, being born and brought up in London, they are Londoners, but only one of them, Caitlin, has what you might call a middle-class, BBC accent. While she was a student, I was always encouraging her to work on the campus radio, with her lovely voice, have a go, pet, but she never did. The other two sound more north London. I think it was because they went to fully comprehensive schools whereas Caitlin at Camden had best friends, all the way through, who were more middle-class, from the same middle-class background as hers.

  In our minds, having moved into the middle classes, we liked to think in our attitudes and beliefs we had not changed, we had not become right-wing and Tory, hangers and floggers, would never on principle send our children to fee-paying schools or pay for private medicine, certainly not.

  We had also retained a lot of our background in other ways. Growing up in the same far northern town, same sort of estate, same sort of families, same sort of school, at the same sort of period, Margaret and I always had so much in common, which of course our children did not have. They were in many ways foreigners to us.

  When they were young, and if we did not want them to understand what we were saying, we would use 1950s Carlisle slang, the sort of words we had used when growing up, such as scran for food, gadgie for bloke, bewer for girl, marra for mate, cushty for good, shan for being embarrassed. I don’t think in fact anyone in Carlisle actually uses these expressions any more, but they lived on in our awfully nice middle-class house in London, NW5, best part.

  My career as a publisher began in 1984. I had been writing quite a few children’s books and one of them came out in a paperback with fourteen pages blank. It was not a mistake, just how they had done it, fitting it into a certain length of book, with fourteen pages totally empty. I was furious. What a waste. All those pages going through the printing process, with nothing on them. If I had known in advance, I could have fille
d it with words, jokes, smart remarks. It made me think how dopey publishers could be.

  I had at the time been thinking of doing a guide book to Lakeland, now that we were going up there all the holidays, walking all the Caldbeck fells. Jake and Flora loved being there as well, especially when we converted the barn into a playroom and bedroom. Caitlin by this time was a moody teenager, so not excited by the thought of being stuck miles from anywhere in the remote countryside. She much preferred staying in London.

  I was sure I could get a publisher for a Lakeland guide book, but it was seeing all those blank pages that made me think I might do it myself. Why let publishers muck it around? I had written enough books by now to know there is no mystery. Both Wainwright and Beatrix Potter insisted on being published their way, with no one telling them what to do. Both started off their careers by self-publishing.

  I wanted to give a rating for everything and everywhere – not just for restaurants and hotels, which is the norm in guide books. I wanted to give stars for lakes, mountains, views, towns, scenery, which I was sure most publishers would not be keen on, thinking it silly or impossible. I also wanted lots of jokes, cartoons, quizzes, and of course every page would be filled. No gaps, no waste.

  Lying awake at night, excited by my own excitement, I thought why not a whole series of opinionated guide books? They would be all in the same style and format, covering the whole world. Brilliant! I would hire a team of researchers and writers, brief them personally, to do each book on the lines I dictated. Never been done before, as far as I was aware, not in the way I would do them.

  After The Good Guide to the Lakes, I will do The Good Guide to London, then New York, Paris, the whole world. I talked to my old friend Michael Bateman about this. He said yes, great idea. He would like to do the Paris one.

  I immediately started on The Good Guide to the Lakes, to create the format, the template for the whole series to come. I knew the northern Lakes pretty well by now, as Margaret and I had explored everywhere with the children, but I did not know the southern Lakes as well. I hired a researcher called Colin Shelbourn, a young York University graduate based in Windermere. He would do the South Lakes, at my direction, in my style, which he did excellently. He also turned out to be a very good cartoonist.

  When I had most of the material written and ready, I went round the local Cumbrian printers, determined that the book would be wholly written, printed and published in Cumbria. None of this nonsense of sending it off to Hong Kong or Italy to be printed, which so many of the big publishers had started to do. I got estimates for printing 10,000 books from several local printers.

  But what about distributing and selling the book? Hmm. I needed to get the books into the bookshops, which I could not possibly do without help.

  I heard that Anthony Cheetham was beginning a brand-new publishing firm called Century. I had met him when he was still at school at Eton. Along with Derek Parfit, the brother of Margaret’s best friend Theo from Oxford, Anthony Cheetham had produced a magazine. They had doorstepped me one day at my Sunday Times office, arriving with copies of their magazine. I admired their cheek and did a story about them in Atticus.

  After Oxford, Anthony had gone into publishing and was now starting a new firm, along with Gail Rebuck, ex-Sussex University, whom I also happened to know. She had been a young editor at a publishing house called Hamlyn, for whom I did a book of British Lists in 1980. She struck me as a bit bossy, but highly efficient and enthusiastic and I had listened to and obeyed all her suggestions. I did three books for her, which all sold well.

  I went to see Anthony and Gail in an upstairs room in Greek Street, Soho, where they were setting up Century. I told them about my publishing venture, not just The Good Guide to the Lakes, but how it was number one in a series which was going to cover the world. I did not want them to put up any money. Oh no. No need. I would be paying for everything – writing, researching, printing and publishing. All I wanted from them was distribution. The advantage to them, as a young firm just starting, was that they would have my title on their first list, in their catalogue, without actually spending a penny.

  The deal Anthony offered me was that they would take 20 per cent of the net returns. Their reps would take orders, distribute the book to the shops, collect the money, then pay me my whack every month. All I had to do was get my books from my printer in Cumbria to their warehouse in Colchester. They would do the rest.

  I got 11,000 copies printed of the first edition – can’t remember now why I ordered that number – by Frank Peters, a printer in Windermere who charged me £6,923. It was rather a large first print for a brand-new book. Normal Lakeland books rarely sold more than two to three thousand.

  I had also told Century I would do some marketing, despite not knowing what that meant. I approached a well-known maker of Kendal mint cake, Romney’s, who were mentioned in the book, along with the other main Kendal mint cake makers, and talked them into giving me 1,000 free bars. I said it would be good publicity for them. The idea was that the first 1,000 buyers of the book in Lakeland would get a free bar of mint cake.

  I went in one day to a bookshop in Ambleside to find a customer had just stormed out. He had bought the book, been given a free bar of Kendal mint cake, which he had thrown on the floor in disgust. The assistant had run after him, explaining it was a free gift. And he then explained that he was a dentist. It made a good story, when I went round promoting the book.

  What I didn’t know was that giving inducements for sale, even just a free bar of mint cake, was against the publishing trade rules. At the time, you could not even give discounts on books. You had to stick to the price on the cover. The Net Book Agreement, as it was called, has fortunately long since gone.

  All 11,000 copies were sold – even before I had the official launch party, which was held at Brockhole, the National Park Centre in Windermere, inviting all the Cumbrian media, all the book sellers and the main tourist attractions mentioned in the Good Guide. That first edition of the book reprinted three times and in the end sold 32,000. My little company, Forster Davies Ltd, had a turnover that first year of £24,000.

  Forster was after my wife’s surname, but she had nothing to do with the publishing. In fact she thought it was potty. It was just me plus my chief researcher Colin. I had already created a company called Forster Davies during that year we went abroad, to collect any UK incomes we might earn. I had kept it going, for no real reason, forgetting about it really, but it proved handy, already having a registered company, which was now needed when I was becoming a proper publisher.

  I went on to do many new editions of The Good Guide to the Lakes over the next twenty years, selling over 100,000 copies. It did so well, I decided to give some of the money away, such as £1,000 to the Cumbria Tourist Board to run an annual award for the Best Lakeland Book of the Year, which is still going strong today. I also gave £1,000 to my old college at Durham to give a prize for the best bit of journalism each year in Palatinate. Showing off, it’s called.

  Because The Good Guide to the Lakes had done so well, in its various editions, I then got a bit carried away with being a publisher and produced some other books, such as a Quiz Book to the Lakes, and one to London, and then a book about the towns and villages of Lakeland. They did not sell as well. Eventually, the sales of the Good Guide tapered off. Updating prices and all the new telephone numbers when regional codes came in, that all became really annoying and expensive. So in the end, after twenty years, I packed it all in. I sold the Good Guide to the Lakes title, for a modest sum, to a proper publishing company, Frances Lincoln, and then wound up my own company, Forster Davies Ltd. Though I still have the headed notepaper. Somewhere.

  Michael Bateman never did get round to writing his Good Guide to Paris. And I never published any other city guides, except to London, so I let down Anthony Cheetham and Gail Rebuck, having boasted I would cover the world.

  What I didn’t know was that roughly around the same time, other people were
beginning similar series of opinionated guidebooks, such as the Rough Guides, which went on to become hugely successful.

  In the heady years when every edition of The Good Guide to the Lakes was flying off the shelves, I ordered yet another updated edition, without first checking sales with Random House. (Which is where Century ended up, with Anthony and then Gail as the big boss.) I had assumed, for some reason, all the copies had gone. It turned out there were still 3,000 copies of the old edition in the warehouse, yet I had printed 10,000 copies of a brand-new edition. I was told by Random House’s sales department that the old 3,000 would have to be pulped.

  No chance, I said, they are my flesh and blood. I will not pulp them. Which is how I ended up with 3,000 copies in our side passage, much to Margaret’s annoyance, as it blocked the side entrance to our back garden. They are mostly still there. I gave some away, the rats and the mice got a lot, but there must be around 2,000 still in the side passage, all mouldering away. But they are mine all mine, a souvenir of a happy stage in my life when I imagined I was about to begin a new career as international publisher.

  16

  BACK TO BOOKS

  I have always been all over the place in books, hardly seeming to stick to one type or one publisher. It means that you don’t quite build up a following, because readers don’t quite know where to place you. They might enjoy a book about Lakeland but have no interest in football, or absolutely adore collecting stamps but hate the Beatles.

  What has usually happened, over these last fifty or so years, is that I fall in love with a subject, start off with almost total ignorance, then hope to con – I mean persuade – a publisher to advance me some money to write a book about it. Sometimes the money is piddling, and the publisher minor, but that does not really matter – just getting a commission is what matters, getting someone to show faith in my self-created project.