Publisher Book

Tom Maschler arrived in England from his home in Berlin by accident; he and his mother were intending to get the boat to New York but they missed it and instead took sail for England. His father, a commercial traveller in the book business and later a publisher of art books, joined them some time after.

As a young man Tom wanted to be a film director, this despite his father extolling the virtues of being a publisher. Tom's view was, 'whatever profession I chose it would not be publishing'. How wrong could he be! After brief sojourns in Rome and Paris, in the latter meeting a number of authors that fuelled his interest in writers, writing and subsequently publishing.

Returning to England he landed a minor job with Andre Deutsch where he worked with Len Deighton, then designing catalogue covers and book covers for the firm, and came into contact with such as Laurie Lee and Vidia Naipaul. He joined the Society of Young Publishers and, after Deutsch offered him a derisory sum for promotion to production manager, he left and joined MacGibbon & Kee where, disappointingly after visiting him in Spain, he failed to land the author Alan Sillitoe for the publishing house. He did, however, work with Doris Lessing, John Osborne, Kenneth Tynan and Colin Wilson in editing a series of essays entitled 'Declarations'; one of his own essays was included in the collection.

It was the publication of 'Declarations' that brought him to the attention of Allen Lane at Penguin and he was offered the job of Assistant Fiction Editor at a salary 'four times as much as I had earned chez Deutsch'. He introduced the New English Dramatists series to the company but overall his view was, perhaps surprisingly, 'I did not find working at Penguin satisfying'. As a result in May 1960 he moved to Jonathan Cape, where he has remained for over 40 years.

During that time he travelled the globe in search of authors and he tells many interesting tales of those that he met. For instance, he dealt with and befriended Arnold Wesker but when he told the writer that he would rather wait until his plays had been performed before publishing them, Wesker fell out with him and 'did not speak to me for 25 years'. Then they met again and it was 'almost like old times'.

At Cape he renewed his friendship with Doris Lessing, who was to become one of his favourites, and he felt that she was most unlucky never to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature and made a new friend in Kurt Vonnegut. Staying with the latter in Cape Cod, he found himself engaged in a special annual event that the author had invented. Near his house was a mud lake, 'wet and squidgy all year round and some three or four feet deep' and the game was for all participants to line up along one side of the lake. They then took off simultaneously and made for the opposite side, 100 metres away. 'The going was rough and the journey took as much as an hour' and when the competitors emerged they were covered from head to toe in thick mud!

He enjoyed time spent with such notable writers as John Fowles, Clive James, Len Deighton (again, this time as a writer), Roal Dahl ('a genius'), Kingsley and Martin Amis, the father 'funny and joyous' but 'basically an unhappy man', the son whose career blossomed with Cape although Kingsley did not like any of his work, Jeffrey Archer, who he alienated over the advance offered for one of his books, Joseph Heller, whose classic book was originally entitled 'Catch 18' but when Leon Uris came up with his 'Mila 18', it became the iconic 'Catch 22', and John Lennon. He saw sketches by the Beatle, liked them, arranged a meeting, got Lennon to draw and write more and the result was the hugely successful 'In His Own Write' which was followed by the equally successful 'A Spaniard in the Works'.

He met people outside of the literary world and one of them was Lauren Bacall whose autobiography Cape had published. She was to come over to the UK for promotion purposes but she insisted on first-class travel (no problem) but also in bringing her hairdresser with her. This was reluctantly agreed by Cape but when it came to transporting her around London she would not accept the company Volvo or a hired Mercedes that Cape offered. She wanted a stretch limousine and without one she said that she would not fulfil her engagements. Needless to say, she didn't fulfil them for Cape cancelled them all.

It was much more fun with Michael Caine when the author met him with Len Deighton to discuss his part as Harry Palmer in one of the films. They were in Berlin and one evening decided to try some of the nightclubs where they understood there were plenty of attractive ladies. He writes, 'The first club we entered seemed, at a glance, to be the answer to our dreams' and 'Michael put his arms round a fabulous creature' but it transpired 'she was a transvestite' - needless to say a speedy exit was made!

He also has a major claim to fame in that he was instrumental in the founding of the Booker Prize. He was giving a lecture on literary prizes and he realised that although America, Italy, Germany, Spain and France had their literary prizes, in England there was only the Somerset Maugham Award, which was worth a measly £250 and that sum had to be used for travel. When he suggested that England should have a major literary prize, the audience wondered where the money would come from. This represented a challenge to Tom and he approached Charles Tyrell at Booker who gave an unequivocal 'yes' to the idea. Thus the Booker Prize with an initial award to the winner of £21,000; now sponsored by the Man Group it is worth £50,000, one of the world's richest literary prizes.

There are a whole host of stories about the modern day literary world and its characters and the book is a delight to read and enjoy stories about one's favourite authors or about authors that one may have never considered; they are all brought to life.

Finally, parodying the author's words about his career at Cape, it is a sad moment when the adventure comes to an end as, of course, it must.