Is even the Bard going out of fashion?

Is even the Bard going out of fashion?

Paul always used the Tiddington road into Stratford when he was going there to see his publishing friend in the summer season.   The traffic was easier and it was a pleasant journey through Charlecote and its deer park, then along the Tiddington Road itself.

He passed J B Priestley’s old home with Jaquetta Hawkes as he headed into Tiddington.  Once a popular author and broadcaster, only An Inspector Calls got much coverage these days and then as a school text.

A recent Times Best Places to Live feature had picked out the Tiddington Road as the place to live in Stratford.  Certainly there were some great houses there, but you would need at least a million pounds to buy them, particularly those that had gardens sloping down to the Avon.

Paul had been in one of these houses to give a talk to an elite women’s group on his speciality, minor 19th century women novelists.  Hired help had served an excellent lunch after his talk.

Driving on he passed the left turn to the smart stadium of Stratford Town football club, partly paid for by the wealth of the town council that owned parts of the town centre.  The Bards were known for their industrial language rather than ‘verily’ or ‘forsooth’, but he still savoured the game when Leamington had secured a 2-0 lead and their fans had broken into a chant of ‘Two nil or not two nil.’

He parked up on the Tiddington side of the river.  Recommending Stratford as a place to live, The Times has said you had to look through the tourists, but that was virtually impossible for much of the year.

With time to spare before his meeting he sat down in the sunshine near the canal basin, mercifully free of tourists with selfie sticks.   He knew that at night round here he would encounter feral youths and the smell of weed.  Indeed the local police had had to issue a dispersal order at the weekend recently.

Off to the left was the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, now in financial difficulty after the royalties from Matilda had dried up.  But Paul had to focus on his forthcoming meeting with Hannah and the requests she was likely to make.

Niche publishing was a hazardous business.   The company was owned by a rich New Yorker who thought that her standing in literary circles would be boosted by being a publisher.   A manager in Harrogate had been brought in to look after the commercial side of the business.  

Hannah had been a successful commissioning editor at a bigger publisher but had welcomed the chance to branch out on her own at the age of 50.  She happened to live near Stratford and the American owner (Annie) thought that publishing from the home of the Bard would give the company a cachet.

The challenge then was to find a name for the company and most of the acceptable Shakespeare related names had been taken up.   Cymbilene Books was the final choice, although Paul was never quite clear what message it sent out.

The company’s basic strategy was to publish in quantity, using mainly academic authors prepared to accept low royalties.   Hence a home had been found for Paul’s book on minor 19th century women novelists.    The plan was to sign up the occasional blockbuster that would sell well and could find an American publisher.

At the height of the crisis triggered by the publication of Harry’s book called Spare Annie had shouted down the phone at Hannah that she had gotta have something on Harry and Meghan.  Hannah knew that every leading publishing house in London and New York had someone already signed up.

Paul came to her rescue.  He knew a constitutional historian in Cambridge who was keen to get his comparative study of European constitutional monarchies into print.  The deal was that Cymbilene would publish his study and in return he would hand over his material on how spares were treated in these countries.

Paul then got a royal watcher he knew to write this up in as racy language as possible.  Fortunately, there were enough scandals surrounding the Belgian, Norwegian, Swedish and Spanish thrones.  The Netherlands and Luxembourg got a joint chapter as worthy but dull.   A chapter was added in on Monaco, not part of the original study as Albert was a serene rather than royal highness, but there was plenty of scandal to dwell on.   Then a chapter on Harry and Meghan was patched together with the aid of press reports and early developments in AI, and a best seller was born.

A couple of years back Paul and Hannah had something of a falling out when she tried to get him to write something on Jane Austen for her anniversary.   Paul countered that Jane Austen was before his period; she was overwritten; and he couldn’t stand the fanatical Janeites.   Hannah’s point was that Austen’s followers, particularly those in the States, would buy anything about her, no matter if it was rubbish.

In the end it all petered out in a lecturer in tourism studies being asked to do a comparative analysis of the tourism industries surrounding Austen and Shakespeare, the former drawing on three locations (Chawton, Bath and Winchester).  This had done well enough, but then Hannah tried without success to cash in on the Tik Tok craze for stories about characters that Austen hadn’t written up with a series of fake biographies. This project also failed.

Paul started to make his way through the crowds in Bridge Street and then up past the birthplace.  He recalled having to go on air for a commercial television station one Sunday lunchtime when it was a slow news day and talk for 10 minutes about Englishness while Japanese tourists clicked away under the impression that he was some kind of celebrity.   Now the Birthplace Trust was in financial trouble and laying off staff.   The Mary Arden house had been mothballed and a car had crashed into one of their Stratford properties.

They were not going to meet in Hannah’s cramped office over a tourist tat shop but in one of the two independent coffee shops in town.  As a widower and retired academic in his sixties, Paul enjoyed Hannah’s mildly flirtatious manner, but knew where to draw boundaries.  Hannah had recently acquired a new partner and Paul valued the access she gave him to publishing gossip as someone who read proposals and manuscripts for publishers.

Paul had an idea today that he hoped Hannah would like.  At her new home outside Stratford she and her partner had acquired some rare breed sheep to run on the few acres that came with the property.    With their lack of experience, they had found lambing a challenge and had to call out the vet more than once, a costly exercise.

Coincidentally, the Competitions and Markets Authority had just published a report on the impact of the acquisition of many vet practices by a small number of private equity companies, forcing prices up.   He thought there would be a good market for a book which combined some discussion of this trend with stories of people who had spent thousands of pounds on treatments for their dogs and cats.  It should be a winner in the Christmas and birthday gifts market.

Rather unusually, Hannah was late for their appointment and wasn’t in the best of moods, slamming her coffee down.   Paul started to make his pitch, but Hannah interrupted him with language she didn’t usually use.   ‘We’re ****ed,’ she declared.

She went on to explain that the company was losing money.  Annie thought that the conflict in the Middle East would push production costs up while reducing the amount of discretionary spending that consumers would have for novelty books.  Moreover, it wasn’t giving her the prestige in New York she had hoped for, one person woundingly described it as a vanity press.

Ralph in Harrogate had been made redundant, but the business had been sold to the Northern Isles University Press in Kirkwall where they made use of the spare printing capacity of the defunct Orkney Herald.    Hannah was to be kept on as a commissioning editor to broaden the list.

‘I’ve looked at their list,’ she said ‘and they have their niche markets.  They’re big on Neolithic people and renewable energy, along with some titles on oil and gas.   And do you know what their best seller is?   Have you ever seen the crime series Shetland?’

Paul said he had and it depicted Shetland as having an extraordinarily high murder rate and chronic drug problems.    

‘Well they’ve produced a guide to the locations used in all the series, eight of them, plus pen portraits of the actors.  It’s selling well to visitors but also in the gift market.’

‘I’m damned if I am going to commission something on Agatha Christie’s locations,’ grumbled Hannah.  She started to deflected blame for her fate on to Paul.  ‘You remind me of what the cinema newsreels said when Neville Chamberlain was replaced as prime minister.  “Thanks, Mr Chamberlain for all you tried to do.”’

Paul made a sad return across the river.   Publishing was changing rapidly and authors like him were no longer required even as advisers, but he reflected that he had done well to keep going as long as he had.