|
|
 |
| |
Jeremy Robson at the Greenland Road base of his publishing firm JR books |
Why poetry was shelved for publishing
Jeremy Robson is battling the big boys in a bid to establish his publishing company – but admits to having other literary ambitions, writes Gerald Isaaman
NOVELIST Dame Beryl Bainbridge has regrets that make you want to cry. She hates the way she treated her mother, Winnie, before she died. And her cats too, recalling how she discovered the mummified remains of five kittens in a wardrobe in her house in Albert Street, Camden Town.
Across the street in Greenland Road, Jeremy Robson, publisher of The Book of Regrets that contains the writer’s poignant confession, sits behind his executive desk and ponders the same question.
“My regrets? That’s such a difficult question,” he says ironically, perhaps because his new publishing empire, JR Books, is already making a significant mark in a world where independents are forever burdened with problems.
Indeed, not only has The Book of Regrets, brilliantly compiled in aid of charity by Juliet Solomon, made headlines, but so has Frederick Raphael’s comeback novel, Fame and Fortune, which is also being serialised on Radio 4, and Michael Winner’s Fat Big Diet, which both star in Jeremy’s new list.
Out this week too is the late Alan Coren’s 69 for One, and in the pipeline are a feast of titles that include Alan Sillitoe’s non-fiction account of his involvement with dissidents in Russia, biographies of Grace Kelly, Clark Gable and Richard Burton, Alfred Brendel on Music, and books on boxing, football and sex, the latter from Hampstead’s own Anne Hooper, an old friend from Robson’s days studying journalism.
He is buoyant having established his new company – with an initial list of 25 new books — just down the road from his own Hampstead home. “It’s a very exciting adventure, like being reborn,” he admits, despite having spent 33 years as a publisher. “Things are looking very positive for JR Books.”
But what about his regrets?
Robson remembers the tennis matches he didn’t win, the girls he didn’t kiss, the friendships he forsook and the books he wished he hadn’t published – and refuses to name them. But then there was that original teenage dream – to become an established poet.
“I was introduced to a director of Faber who wrote me a letter saying that to be a poet in publishing is like trying to be a prostitute by day and a virgin by night,” he recalls. “And I now know what he meant.
“You get so involved in publishing that all your energies go into other people’s books.
“Publishing has taken away whatever it was that made me want to write poetry, though I still want to and I am still writing lines. Not continuing as a poet is my deepest regret.”
Perhaps it is not too late in the day for Robson to do that. He had, after all, established himself as a young poet with two published collections of his work, toured Israel with the late poet laureate Ted Hughes reading their own poetry, and helped launch the poetry and jazz movement – the first event was at Hampstead Town Hall – that blossomed and then died in the 1960s.
But he has no regrets about his venture into solo publishing with the significant help of his wife, Carole, running his own company before merging with the record company Chrysalis before it succumbed to a management buyout and, inevitably, felt more and more uncomfortable as an oddity in the new Anova group.
Then Laurence Orbach, a friend from Robson’s days at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School when it was based in Cricklewood, now boss of the international publishing company Quarto, suggested he relaunch himself.
“‘You don’t need them’, he told me,” says Robson. “‘Why don’t you start again? We’ll back you. We’ll start a new company and you can run it with freedom.’”
And that is exactly what he is doing. Enjoying the fruits of his experience, the loyalty of authors he published in the past and taking on the demands of competing with major companies in the battle to buy – and sell – the best books in an overcrowded marketplace.
“Life for a small publisher is extremely difficult,” Robson admits. “You have to fight to get space in bookshops. You have to pay to get the space to display your books. It is an incredible racket.
“Sometimes you think you’re just a lending library when they send back the books they haven’t sold. I can’t imagine any other business that would stand for that. Nevertheless, we are going ahead.
“And our big coup is Fame and Fortune, this new novel by Frederic Raphael, a sequel to his Glittering Prizes, which was such a big hit 30 years ago and made into a film with Tom Conti.
“Now the sequel is being dramatised for radio, with Tom Conti again and fantastic stars like Miranda Richardson, Harriet Walter and Anthony Sher. It is wonderful for us to have such a magnificent novel.”
So he has no regrets really. But if you want to read an array of fascinating ones from a host of famous names, among them locals Alastair Campbell, Dannie Abse, Sir Martin Gilbert, Nicholas Hytner, Baroness Julia Neuberger, Esther Rantzen, Hunter Davies, Richard Wilson and the ubiquitous Tom Conti, then spend £10.99 on The Book of Regrets* published by JR Books.
Regret of Dame Beryl
WRITING in the Book of Regrets, Dame Beryl Bainbridge confesses: “The thing I regret most is my attitude to my mother, Winnie, once she grew old.
“I didn’t understand about old age. She lived in Liverpool and I lived in London, and though she came to stay with me regularly and I telephoned her twice a week, I had no idea what she was going through.
“When we did meet it was only a matter of hours before I became exasperated by her apparent deafness, her nodding off, her constant remembering of times past.
“Now that I too am subjecting my own children to such irritations, I am aware of how selflessly they treat me.
“My mum died in bed, alone, 33 years ago.”
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
