Nigel Beale's Biblio File Podcast

Ever since writing this article on collecting teapots, for my friend Tony Martins, I’ve been thinking about my great uncle Sir Arthur Church. I had no idea he was such a wheel in collecting circles, back at the turn of the 20th century. All I knew was that he’d discovered a colour. A bright red, water-soluble pigment called Turacin (found in the feathers of West African birds known as Turacos),had a rock named after him (a mineral actually, called Churchite), and wrote some books on food Turns out he was among the first to apply science to the practice of collecting - subjecting materials to measurements that verified things like age and molecular structure. He was also an expert on paint chemistry and conservation. Even dabbled in landscapes himself. Some say he was responsible for transforming collecting from just a hobby “a mere acquisitiveness,” into a rigorous scientific discipline, by applying chemical analysis to the preservation and authentication of art. As a collector himself, of all sorts of things (from ceramics to botanical drawings, precious stones to Japanese sword-handles) he believed that those of us who practice are public benefactors responsible for preserving our property for the benefit of others - artists and archaeologists and historians for example.He’s credited with being a pioneer in preventative conservation practices, advising the Ashmolean Museum early on in 1896 to moderate light, temperature, and humidity in its galleries in order to protect its paintings. His book The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890) became an essential guide for identifying stable pigments versus those prone to fading - this fundamentally changed how collections were managed and maintained. Restoration Expertise? He was called upon to restore the Maclise frescoes at the Palace of Westminster, during which he proved that airborne sulphuric acid from smoke was the primary cause of their decay. Technical Curatorship? While honorary curator at the Corinium Museum he conducted detailed chemical analyses of Roman wall pigments.Nigel Beale's Biblio File podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In short, what he was, was one of those quite common indefatigable Victorian hyper achiever-types who put everyone else (including ancestors) to shame with the amount of work they did. Then again, he didn’t have any kids - that I’m aware of. Regardless, I’m proud to be related to him, even if I had nothing to do with it. Despite the fact that everything chemistry makes me nauseous (high-school hangover), it’s pretty clear that I inherited a collecting gene from him.Which brings us to the first question I asked bookseller Dan Morgan during a recent conversation I had with him in Prague: could this kind of inheritance have played a role in his life? Dan and I sat down (for the second time) in his cool, quiet, secluded bookshop last month to discuss his transformation from modernist book design collector to bookseller. It’s one collector interview in a series I hope to expand over the coming months (for some already in the can, try Mark Samuels Lasner and Mark Andrews). Collecting, and studying what you’ve collected, adds a great deal not only to the understanding of one’s own life, but also, I’d say, to one’s heritage. It’s patriotic! Collectors can help their fellow citizens to learn about communal history. Collectors do the job that Librarians and Archivists should be doing but can’t, in many cases, due to lack of funds. Given this, cultivating and celebrating collectors is the least governments and libraries should do. I’ll see what I can do to get Canada’s chief librarian (and the U.S.’s and U.K.’s) to address this with me ahead of the new National Library and Archive building opening scheduled for later this year. Please stay tuned. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy listening to Dan’s story - his love affairs with an extraordinary Czech woman, collecting, and Czech Modernist book design. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Judging from Stephen Miller’s Twitter feed, a ton of immigrants living in the United States are dangerous criminals who need to be incarcerated, exterminated or, at the very least, deported. His is a spigot of malice that drops toilet bowls full of racist hatred over the heads of “foreigners;” Miller’s tweets are pulling the same carts that Nazi-owned newspapers did years ago in Germany, during the 20s and 30s, spreading the manure of anti-Semitism. This comparison came to me a month ago or so when I was in Dresden perusing the local flea market scene. In reality, of course, the vast majority of immigrants in the U.S. are exemplary, law-abiding, citizens (more so than the general population) who contribute a great deal to the country’s well-being. Misrepresenting them as enemies of the state -dehumanizing them, smearing them - is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews, leading up to the gas chambers. In fact it comes straight from the National Socialist playbook. Where’s proof of this demonizing and scapegoating? In Nazi newspapers, which is exactly what, given my electric fascination for print culture, I figured I should go after while I was in Dresden. Nothing at the flea markets unfortunately (I did however score this: a week or two later in Vienna. Not Nazi propaganda obviously. The opposite in fact. The year is 1933. The paper was shut down in 1934) but I did get lucky at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, spending a good morning there in the basement scouringthe library. As it happens, researchers at the Institute, notably Christoph Hanzig, have been digitizing and analysing Der Freiheitskampf, a Dresden-based Nazi daily, for the better part of a decade. Christoph is a ‘font’ of knowledge when it comes to Nazis manipulating the news.I spoke with him about Miller, and Nazi print propaganda techniques, a couple of weeks ago via Zoom. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

The first time out we talked about the miracles he worked at Waterstones. Then we looked at his early plans for Barnes & Noble. Now James Daunt and I discuss the future: where his bookstore chains are headed, when B&N is going public, how employee pay scales have changed, why entrepreneurship enlivens everything, when he plans to retire and what he’s going to do with himself. Plus we get even more personal: how does a busy guy like James combat loneliness, why are so many billionaires pedophiles, what are the secrets to long a marriage, and happiness; what constitutes a life well lived, what matters most?Tune in for some profundity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Bloomsbury Publishing has been in business for almost forty years. Last year it earned £361.0 million. Over the past five years it’s taken in more than £1.4 Billion. It’s one of, if not the most successful publishing ventures of the past century. How does this work? I asked Founder and Chief Executive Nigel Newton. Here we talk about, among other things, Frank Newton — Nigel’s prospecting, race car-driving grandfather; about Peter, his wine-making father; about book publishing and stock picking; the acquisition A&C Black; The Garrick Club; ‘romantasy’ and Sarah J. Maas; Liz Calder; floatation in 1994; aspiring to be mid-sized; Christopher Little; J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter being a fluke; Amazon observing territorial copyright; AI licensing agreements as unforeseen backlist windfalls; suing AI companies; ideal publishing companies; surviving medically; Emotional Intelligence; The History of Bloomsbury Publishing coming out in April, 2027 to celebrate 40th years in business; Anthony Blonde’s book - not The Truth about Publishing. It’s either The Publishing Game (1971) or The Book Book (1983) (for sure I own at least one of these, and I’m going to say, almost 100%, it’s signed); foreign rights; and how to lead a happy, fulfilling life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Publishing books in Canada is a punishing, risky business. Even if your little enterprise makes it through, surviving years of ups and downs, in the end nobody will buy it. Not even the Americans (who have bought everything else in Canada it seems), because viability is tied to Canadian government-approved domestic list-specific grants. Pretty bleak the whole thing. Not to say that being a publisher in Canada isn’t a damned good time, as Scott McIntyre’s lively new memoir A Precarious Endeavour ( not the be confused with The Perilous Trade - published fittingly or not by PRH) proves. It’s just that you don’t get rich, at least financially. I spoke with him about it. It’s a fun, far from dismal, albeit slightly honeyed romp through the past 50 years of the book business in Canada featuring the life and times of West coast publishing house Douglas & McIntyre, one that McIntyre co-founded in 1970 with Jim Douglas. A parade of colourful Canadian literary and political characters boogies through the bookI enjoyed talking with Scott about them, and about, among other things, animals being used as publisher logos, glaring contradictions; publishing being the art of the possible; Canada’s West Coast vibe; Alfred Knopf; the Barbarian Press; Scott’s love of West Coast indigenous art; his house; his struggles with fellow publisher Anna Porter to sign broadcaster Jack Webster and journalist Allan Fotheringham’s books; about the influence, skill-set and anger of Jack McClelland - arguably Canada’s greatest book publisher; about best-selling author/historian Peter C. Newman and sailing; about the superb quality of many of D&M’s books andnot going to Scott’s house to see them; about Frankfurt; and about the atrocity of McClelland and Stewart’s backlist - one of Canadian culture’s undisputed treasures - falling into foreign hands (Penguin Random House’s) under dubious circumstances; about the recently deceased Elaine Dewar getting it wrong (according to Scott) in her fascinating book The Handover on the topic ( I interviewed her at the time. Listen here. I’m not so sure she got it wrong. Nor is Marc Côté) and finally, about English Canadians generally, and bureaucrats, specifically, not giving a s**t about their own culture. On that note, I hope you’ll take as much pleasure listening to Scott as I did. Please stay tuned. Coming up very shortly (assuming it gets through the censors) my Biblio File podcast conversation with Nigel Newton the great British-American publisher who discovered J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Interesting mix of shyness and confidence is Ken Whyte. You’ll hear both assert themselves during this conversation. Together they explain his hugely successful career as an editor in Canada over the past 40 years, if you ask me.Ken started editing at Alberta Report magazine during the eighties, then got the job, in 1994, as editor of Saturday Night magazine, one of the oldest and most venerated in the country. In 1998 he was appointed Editor in Chief of Conrad Black’s start-up newspaper The National Post and in 2005 took over as Editor and Publisher of Maclean’s, Canada’s all-time most interesting magazine. In 2017 he launched Sutherland House Books. In the Spring of 2025 it acquired Fitzhenry and Whiteside. And last month Ken made it onto The Biblio File.We talk briefly about the acquisition, take a look at storytelling, descend into despair, talk our way back from the void, and then finally dig into the meat: tearing away at the differences between editing a magazine and editing a book. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Ira Wells' new book, On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, was officially released in the U.S. today, June 3, 2025, by Biblioasis. It’s a succinct, well-written, beautifully aphoristic examination of a rising trend to censor books in North America.Wells is a rising assistant professor of literature at the University of Toronto. On Book Banning is a reaction, specifically, to books being attacked not just by fundamentalists in Florida and but also by out-of-control woke activists in Ontario, and how both extremes are using the same weak excuse to get books out of school libraries: claiming that ‘our innocent children are being harmed!’ The book critiques what Wells identifies as a growing "censorship consensus" among conservatives and progressives, under which both sides conceive of literature as a battleground where ideological agendas are at war, rather than what it should be: a refuge for open inquiry and artistic expression. Wells traces the impulse to censor literature from ancient Rome, through Milton and Mill, to modern-day class-rooms where parents are currently fighting to suppress both LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive content, and material that’s deemed “obscene.” Drawing on personal experience participating in an audit at his children’s school library, Wells reflects on how such practices thwart learning, and push ignorance over dialogue. He contends that the censorship trend is undermining democratic values such as free expression and intellectual growth.We talk about all of this, and Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia to boot. (I left in a couple of minutes at the end where Ira flips the switch/holds the mic, and asks a few questions about what I’ve been up to). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Roberto Banchik-Rothschild, to use his full, official Mexican name, is the CEO of Penguin Random House ( PRH) Grupo Editorial in Mexico. He also leads the company’s publishing activities in Central America, and is responsible for the Hispanic market in the U.S.He is a charming man, a book-lover who believes that publishing has the power to change society, and people’s lives, for the better; in its noble capacities. He’s also a company man, who, here, ably parries the piñata-full of criticisms I crack open above PRH during the course of this conversation. I interviewed Roberto in a sound-studio at his offices in Mexico City.For some reason I had the high-profile 2022 anti-trust case involving Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster on my mind when I walked in. It might have had something to do with the fact that I’d just read these two damning articles, one by Elle Griffin, the other by Ken Whyte. I voice some of the concerns they raise about today’s publishing climate, and the Big 5, during my conversation with Roberto, among them: lack of competition; collusion, greed, wokeness, greatness, private interest and public service, monopsony, diversity. We also talk about the b*******s of good, alienated mid-range straight, white male authors; watered-down backlists; identity politics, sour grapes, meat-lovers, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to read. As Roberto has it, Mexican publishing floats far above most of the mess painted by Griffin and Whyte.Not surprisingly, I suppose, given how everything, not just publishing, seems to be going pear-shaped in the land of liberty these days. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

​B. Traven's​ novels and stories​ have sold m​ore than ​3​0 million copies​ over the past century, in more than 30 languages​ worldwide. He was Einstein's favourite novelist. Der Spiegel ranks his The Death Ship as the third greatest German novel ever written (okay in the past 100 years), after Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Kafka's The Castle; and yet, despite this, few today, in the English speaking world at least, have heard of him. It's only thanks to the movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, based on one of his stories, that he's known here at all. Why is this?Perhaps because no-one knows with absolute certainty who Traven was. No-one is 100% sure of his true identity. Timothy Heyman CBE is 99% sure. We talk here about his hypothesis, plus the tasks he's set himself to re-establish Traven's reputation and re-gain an audience for his works. Heyman, a considerable person in his own right, is co-manager (recently promoted to managing director) of the B. Traven Estate along with his wife (who is proprietor), Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman​, Traven's stepdaughter. I met Tim up in the couple's beautiful apartment overlooking Mexico City to talk about what he's achieved to date with Traven's literary archive, and, again, who he thinks Traven really was. We were surrounded by a library of books written by the mystery man, accompanied by a glorious panoramic view of the city. After our conversation we went upstairs to a special room which holds the archive - the place where Tim occupies himself with the business of legacy building. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Some years ago I interviewed David McKnight about a collection of Canadian “little magazines” he’d hunted down and later donated to the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Library. It was very easy to get caught up in David’s enthusiasm, and I was really impressed by the catalogue he’d produced. Shortly after our conversation I learned that he didn’t just collect Canadian poetry, he was also a serious Beatles collector. We stayed in touch. I drove down to Philadelphia where David hosted me at his home for a weekend. We got a lot done. Took the train into New York for the opening of a film about a bookseller; went on a tour of the rare book and manuscript library at the University of Pennsylvania where David worked at the time as director; attended the Allentown Paper Fair where I picked up some old Fortune and New York Times magazines. It was great. A non-stop exchanging of excited thoughts about books, collecting, and cool periodicals. I’ve been wanting to interview David about The Fab Four ever since I learned of his passion. He’s a real expert on the band. I was particularly keen to find out about his personal relationship to the music, and of course, about his experience collecting and documenting its impact on print culture, internationally, high and low. Finally, after years of talking about it, we got down to business. The albums, the books - from limited editions to paperbacks - the magazines, the fan zines, the ephemera, the scrap-books, the puzzles. Liverpool. It’s all here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac. I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you. Here’s a look at a few items discussed: this Ottoman magazine from the mid-late 1920s:You’ll notice how it (and many of the covers below) features the face of a beautiful woman. This one in particular was puzzling. Why was the work of a Polish-American illustrator, W.T. Benda, on the cover of a 1920s Ottoman magazine? A bit of googling revealed that it was likely first commissioned by Hearst’s International magazine Michael explains that Turkish editors routinely swiped images from Western magazines which had made their way into the country. Same with the Greeks it seems. It’s highly unlikely they paid any kind of agency/copyright fees for these:The image on the left appeared first on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. Michael and I talk about the Westernizing influence of this, and Hayat magazine, plenty of which we scored. Brigitte Bardot incidentally led the way with cover appearancesOf course she wasn’t the only blonde bombshell to appearNotice those divots along the spine of the magazine? Evidence that it was defenestrated (I know this word choice isn’t quite right - officially it describes what Putin does to his opponents - but it works so well here that it’s going to stand) from a book it was bound in. We also talk a bit about Hafta magazineand too about the importance of caricature in Turkey. Ramiz Gökçe’s Chubby Aunt, for example, was a big hit in the 1940s (and today with you readers):Ramiz was a frequent contributor to Karikatur magazine. Here’s one of his covers:His work has been labelled by some as antisemitic. Michael unpacks the historical nuances of this prejudice as they pertain to Turkey.For more images of magazines referenced during our conversation, check out his blog here.Finally, although he doesn’t address the topic (because I failed to ask him about it) here are a few fun pieces of erotica we picked up while in Istanbul (for a primer on collecting this precious material, listen to my conversation with Tony Fekete, a famed collector in the field, here) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

I first came across Andrés Mario Zervigón’s (Cuban) name while researching a magazine that filled me with awe the first time I looked at it. AIZ, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers Illustrated Magazine) is an illustrated, mass circulation German periodical that was published in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s (in Prague after 1933). It contains some of the most emotionally charged imagery I’ve ever seen. The best images were created by John Heartfield. Some 260 full-page photomontages of his appeared in AIZ during the 1930s. Their power, I think, attests to the artist’s ability to leverage not only a personal sense of outrage over injustices that were perpetrated against him in his youth (both his parents abandoned him when he was eight) but also a broader, more universally felt anger, into affecting visual commentary about the atrocities that were being committed in Germany by Hitler and his followers at the time. Many of Heartfield’s best photomontages unveil a timeless ‘truth’: that the rich don’t give a s**t about the poor and innocent. Rather, they systematically, savagely, heartlessly exploit and exterminate them for selfish reasons. It’s a Marxist message, told using a Marxist approach to history: retelling, or massaging, existing news coverage (‘evidence’) in order to tell the ‘real’ truth. Only, in Heartfield’s case, with images, instead of words.Heartfield’s art electrifies. It shocks the viewer with a “bracing” jolt by boldly depicting and unmasking putatively respectable politicians, for example, as the thugs, crooks and murderers they really are. Heartfield’s truth-telling photomontages activate a sort of moral consciousness it seems; they aggravate the conscience. They’re a blatant accusation of crime. A kind of scream for justice. Looking at them triggers a deep muscle memory filled with generations of pent up anger. There’s great emotional power in them. They’re designed to produce a strong reaction, and to jar the viewer into an awareness of the impact that photography is having on them. It’s hard to explain exactly why Heartfield’s work retains its power, partly due no doubt to how brilliantly it exposes hypocrisy and interprets the cultural/political zeitgeist. For sure it's partly due to technique, juxtaposition and stark imagery, but also to how smart Heartfield and his brother Wieland Herzfelde were. They worked together on many projects, including a run of brilliant dust jackets for the successful book publishing company they built together called Malik Verlag. These, along with the AIZ photomontages, are among the first and best works of persuasive ‘pictorial’ art ever designed, intentionally focusing, as they do, on telling emotional stories. As such, they’ve had a huge impact on 20th century visual culture, and on the look of magazines specifically, which is why we’re talking about them.Andrés Mario Zervigón is professor of the history of photography at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2000 and concentrates his scholarship “on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art. His first book, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012), proposes that “photography’s sudden ubiquity in illustrated magazines, postcards, and posters produced an unsettling transformation of visual culture that artists felt compelled to address.”Zervigón’s work, says the Rutger’s website, “generally focuses upon moments in history when these media [film, photography, fine art] prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual.” We start our conversation by unpacking this passage, and then move on to a short history of illustrated, mass circulation magazines, (including VU magazine), then to the life of John Heartfield, and finally to AIZ. Stay tuned for the Backstory, and lots of photos of items from my Heartfield/AIZ collection. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

The only real acquaintance I’ve had with erotic literature came years ago when I was a teenager. I read My Secret Life, in the fat, purple Grove paperback edition. And re-read and re-read, and re-read it.Man was it exciting. Then again, not surprisingly the briefest glimpse of a bare breast (Sarah Miles’s, for example, in Ryan's Daughter) would set me spinning back then. My having had to turn to reading for thrills says as much I think about the dearth of visually stimulating content easily available to young men in the seventies, as it does about anything else, particularly when you consider what’s on offer today. It would be fascinating to know what impact this huge change in the lives of teenage boys has had on Western culture, for good or bad. Maybe Trump was elected because of it…Anyhow, about six months ago a bookseller friend of mine showed me some erotica, deftly feathering in comments about how exotic and interesting this collecting area is. Of course I took the bait and bought, then started looking for more. First I found some old reference material,then some new, I hung tough for three or four months, acquiring thisand that, mostly newer stuff, and then basically withdrew from the field, dropping it for a new fascination. Typical behavior. Now I have a drawer full of smut under the bed that I don’t look at…often. Pretty well exactly the way not to go about collecting. During this dalliance I did, however, come across the renowned 2014 catalogue of highlights from the erotica library of Tony Fekete (which incidentally contains a very scarce first edition set My Secret Life) Items from the catalogue netted more than £1 million. Tony is on Instagram it turns out, so I started following him. Nice feed. His posts popped up periodically. They were fun. So I messaged him to ask if he’d like to talk about his collections. The book Tony references during our conversation is entitled The Skin Book (not The Skin Game) by C.S. Vanek. It’s one of his favourites. Lots on role playing and S &M. Budapest, he says, is good for used antiquarian bookshops, and is home to a favourite cafe, the 'Muvesz’ or Artists Cafe, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the city. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history and former head of the University of Leipzig's​ Institute for Communication and Media Studies. He is the author of Book ​Covers of the GDR and is currently working on a history of the S. Fischer publishing house, due out in 2026.We met in Leipzig recently where Siegfried treated me to a tour of ​t​he Bibliotop's splendid Insel Bucherei book collection.Founded in 1912, the series now ​c​ontains some 2,000 titles ( and still counting according to Jonathan Landgrebe, head of Suhrkamp Verlag, the company that today produces the books). The series is iconic in Germany and in many ways its publishing history reflects the history of the country. The books are known for their beauty and the care with which they're produced: qualities include individual typographical design, exquisite illustration (notably from the thirties - stay tuned) and photography, and printing on wood-free, age-resistant paper, plus they're thread-stitched and bound in decorative cover paper.​ They served as the model for Allen Lane's King Penguins. The series includes both well-known and little known texts from world literature as well as art history, non-fiction, poetry, fairy tales, and gift anthologies from Germany and around the ​g​lobe.Subjects covered in my conversation with Siegfried include Rilke and copyright, ​the decision to publish​ established versus contemporary works, Stephan Zweig and the Nazis, poisonous mushrooms, the rarest number, the Allied bombing of Leipzig, censorship, the separation of East and West Germany, wartime profits, collecting, pornography and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and his very own Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association. His book My Back Pages, An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022 came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him. Just so you know, Richard has been very good to The Biblio File podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests.  And John Banville! I’m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things, great publishers, the challenges facing the book business, and how to set up a small publishing house.I wrote this about him a while back:Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It’s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions…His writing invited and welcomed a human response. I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he’s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently in the form of an OBE. It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

A few years ago I interviewed Larry Grobel about his interviewing technique and some of the great interviews he’s conducted over the years, including the one he did for Playboy magazine with Marlon Brando. Ever since our conversation I’ve casually kept an eye out for issues that contain his interviews. In line with the colossal amount of real estate magazines have recently colonized in my brain, I’ve been looking extra hard for opportunities to buy cool, smart, beautifully designed, interesting examples of same. Playboy fits the bill. Many have unfairly slagged it as merely a degenerate girlie magazine. It’s not. Content and container are tops. For example, a lot of the interviews are deep, revealing and informative, plus there’s loads of quality writing to read, from the likes of Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Germaine Greer, Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury…many of the cartoons are actually funny, and most importantly, the design, thanks to art director Art Paul (he was there from the start, left in 1982) is groundbreaking and terrific.A couple of months ago I scored a big whack of Playboys in lazy little Belleville Ontario, Canada. Close to 400 I’m guessing. None from the fifties unfortunately, but plenty from the sixties through the naughties. Incidentally, I shouldn’t go around belittling Belleville. In addition to the Playboys, I also found, in Belleville, a nice collection of Fred Woodward-art directed 1990s Rolling Stone magazines, plus I attended a great performance of a very funny play called Hilda’s Yard at the local theatre. The same troupe is just off a completely sold-out run of The Sound of Music (my friend Dave Henderson played Captain Von Trapp. We left town before the curtain went up, but caught a dress rehearsal. It was wonderful. Some beautiful voices, some moving performances [notably from Kiersten Hanly as Maria and Willow Foley as Liesl Von Trapp], contagious enthusiasm from the entire staff, and an admirable performance from Dave! Lots going on beneath the surface in Belleville. And, Avril Lavigne was born there. Obviously I was interested in knowing more about the Playboys I’d acquired, which reminded me, the last time I ran into renowned book scholar Jonathan Rose ( at a SHARP conference) he’d mentioned that he was doing some work on the magazine. ‘Way more women readers than you’d expect!’ he’d told me. I emailed him. He directed me to a paper he’d delivered last year at SHARP entitled Readers, Magazines, Playboy, Market Research: The Daniel Starch Reports as Tools for Reading Research, I read it and teed up this conversation on Zoom. Subjects covered include Daniel Starch and his Starch Reports, Soviet readership reports, Stephen Hawking, Woody Allen, free speech, Skyhorse Publishing, gay rights, Hugh Hefner, art director Art Paul, missionaries, free enterprise, Cosmopolitan Magazine, airbrushing, pornography, conventional wisdom, myths, George Orwell and populism This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

A year and a half ago or so I spent the weekend in Old Montreal with my friend Tony Martins. Here’s the view from our hotel window(that development up at the top is called Habitat. It was designed by Moshe Safdie for Expo 67. My friends the poet Eric Ormsby and his wife librarian Irena Murray, used to own a unit in the place). One evening Tony and I went to dinner at this Polish restaurant. On the walk back to the hotel we passed this shop L’Affichiste before stopping in at this barWhat a wonderful idea (the shop) I thought. How often does a guy see vintage posters on the street!? Intrigued, I decided to return the next day. The owner, Karen Etingin happened to be in and we had a good chat about, among other things, Steven Heller, New York, Cassandre, and the business of selling posters. Turns out Karen is the author of a book on this great Austrian poster designer:(in fact, Julius Klinger is recognized as one of the leading graphic designers of his age, along with Lucian BernhardListen to my Biblio File conversation with Christopher Long about him here ). Fast forward a year, and I was back in the store again, this time for what amounted to a personal tour through 20th century posters, thanks to Lea. It was great! Apparently, however, I'm not special. Anyone can get the same treatment if they visit the shop. Anyhow, Lea’s tour sealed it. I had to interview Karen. Several weeks ago we taped a show.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

When you think of it, content aside, there’s actually quite a bit more to love in a magazine than there is in a book. Take photographs. The January 7, 1966 issue of Life magazine that I recently picked up, features a story on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It’s plastered with a slew of great shotsby Richard Avedon. Then there’s the stuff that illustrates the articles, in this case, an image of the news story that Capote happened upon, detailing the murder of H.W. Clutter, and his wife and two sons; their “savage, inexplicable slaying in Holcomb, Kansas. As the article puts it, Capote sped West on a hunch that the murders, if examined in enough detail, might lead to a special kind of book, what he called, a “non-fiction novel.” Kansas and Capote took to each other, with surprising “quickness and warmth,” says the article.Friend and confidant of both killers and police, Capote, the article continues, amassed an “encyclopedic knowledge” of almost everyone touched by the crime. His mission was to “dig to the roots” of every aspect of the crime in order to truly comprehend the viewpoints of the victims, criminals and mourners. To do this he had to apply the craft of listening, something at which he was a master. What interests me, he’s quoted as saying, are not the little nuances of my own life, but of the lives of people around me. Too many writers, he says, are mesmerized by their own navels. What mattered to him was to get to know the people he interviewed as well as he knew himself. In short, become their friends. Both of the murderers, for example, ended up asking him to be a witness. Perry wrote him a hundred page farewell letter. Both their graves were marked with gravestones paid for by Capote. Interestingly, he never took notes when he interviewed people - felt it made them feel self-conscious and inhibited. “It makes them say what they think you expect them to say,” he said. So he taught himself to be his own tape recorder, typically going to motels shortly after his conversations to type out what was in his head. I’ve covered crime fiction on The Biblio File over the years, interviewing the likes of Denise Mina, Bill Deverell, and others. Now it’s time for true crime. Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I’ve followed his career for some fifteen years now. He’s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey into a television series for Apple TV+. We talk here about Michael’s recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale, about Capote and listening and details, about being honest when talking with people who’ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

I'm happy to report that my out-of-control recent/older/"vintage" magazine acquisition campaign continues to rage unabated. Facebook Marketplace, ebay, Maxx Sold, library bookstores, book warehouses, thrift stores, yard sales...I'm easy. Really not picky about which pub I drink at.What I hoist is based mostly on gut reaction to arresting cover and spread designs, re-sell potential (namely, is there a sexy celebrity kisseron the cover); and intelligence about "great" art directors gathered from a few beautiful books picked up over the past year or so, among them: Magazine Design by Owens, Surprise Me ( riffing/ripping off famed art director Alexey Brodovitch's exhortation to "Astonish me!") by Horst Moser, and Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them, by Ian Birch. I found Ian's book at Budget Books, an English-language bookshop in Prague, and loved it immediately; full of exactly the kind of informative detail about ground-breaking art directors that I’m after. Flipping around the credits I noticed that Hannah Knowles was one of its editors. I'd interviewed her back when she was senior commissioning editor at Canongate (she's now in charge of editorial at Faber), listen here. So I sent her an email asking for Ian's contact details and away we went. I had him on the show. Ian is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, Grazia."Uncovered kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go if you want to interview the people who both created them and are still alive, and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died. -- This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

I originally planned to outline the history of pamphleteering for you here and explain, with the help of Paul Wells, how I think it resembles Substacking. The fact, for example, that pamphlets were among the first things to come off the printing press in the 1450s; that Martin Luther was a big-time pamphleteer; that flippant, lively pamphlet writing effectively satirized lots of flagrantly decadent behavior at the French Court during the 18th century, and that Blaise Pascal raised the art of the pamphlet to the level of literature; and that pamphlets were wielded as lethal weapons in 17th Century England, and that political parties employed the likes of Addison, Steele and Swift to thrust their messages out; that Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense caused the American “Revvie;” and that the Federalist Papers were cribbed from pamphlets written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. But we’ll have to wait.According to the Encyclopedia Britannica the Federalist Papers mark the end of the era of the political pamphlet. From here on in, ‘political dialogue was largely carried on in newspapers, periodicals and books.’ Maybe pamphleteering has nothing to do with Substack. Paul Wells is a leading Canadian political journalist and author. We met in his office in Ottawa to talk about his storied career, and his craft: writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack. Topics covered in our conversation include observing and interviewing politicians; reading and remembering history; putting events into context; pre-revolutionary Paris; pedagogy; helping people; recited formulas, thrown slogans, and knowing you’re being lied to; the difficulty politicians experience actually making a difference in the world; discussing issues in their full complexities; “the wall of words,” “the significant trifle;” including yourself, and analysis, in your narratives; paying for Substack subscriptions because you want to make comments; filling the ‘weekend supplement’ niche; understanding each other as neighbours; and the secret to a successful marriage. The pamphleteering palaver will wait. Perhaps it’ll surface in a conversation with Margaret Atwood, scheduled for later this Fall, when we’ll talk about her new book Paper Boat; she is, after all, really good on history.Finally, about political writing, here’s Clive James on George Orwell:"Orwell’s standards of plain speaking always were and still are a mile too high for politicians. What finally counts with politicians is what they do, not how they say it. But for journalists how they say it counts for everything. Orwell’s style shows us why a style is worth working at: not just because it gets us a byline and makes a splash but because it compresses and refines thought and feeling without ceasing to sound like speech — which is to say, without ceasing to sound human. At a time when ideological politics still exercised such an appeal that hundreds of purportedly civilized voices had ceased to sound human, Orwell’s style stood out. The remarkable thing is that it still does" This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. In this lavishly illustrated book, noted design historian Christopher Long traces Bernhard's life and career, uncovering new truths and demolishing old myths.”Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich and Vienna, and received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Trained as a cultural historian, his dissertation was a study of the Viennese architect and designer Joseph Frank. He has since written extensively on various aspects of Central European Modernism and has published monographs on a number of notable central European emigre architects and designers in the United States.We talk about his latest, Lucian Bernhard. I learned about it from Steven Heller’s essential Daily Heller, and was thrilled to see that it was published by Kant Books, based in Prague. All I had to do was to walk about ten minutes from my apartment doorstep to my favourite bookstore Kavka Books to pick up a copy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

I interviewed Nick Anthony a year or so ago about his experience writing a first novel and getting parts of it work-shopped. Today I catch up with him to find out what he’s been doing and where he’s at now on the road to getting his first book published. We talk about, among other things, how AI has helped him in the writing process; subjective and objective readers; the difference between screen writing and novel writing; Noam Chomsky on plagiarism; Elon Musk on Harry Potter; chess; photography; Joyce’s Ulysses; Marcel Proust writing about me going to the corner store to buy a bag of milk; and more.The “Josh” I reference towards the end of the conversation is Josh Dolezal, who was a recent guest on The Biblio File podcast. He talked about, among other things, the experience of trying to find a literary agent. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

It's hard to get a grip on George Weidenfeld, as it is with most interesting people. A brilliant networker, salesman, indefatigable party-thrower and book progenitor, he was a man surrounded by scores of friends who loved him, but who, at the same time, suffered from intense, life-long, loneliness. This, we learn in Thomas Harding's entertaining, balanced new biography, entitled The Maverick, George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing. Balanced because it contains plenty of warts. Right off the top Barbara Walters is quoted as saying that there were ten George Weidenfelds and that she loved every one of them. This is a tad hard to swallow given how Harding describes Weidenfeld’s behavior around young women in the workplace and how he was “slippery,” and double-crossed various authors, including one of England's finest journalist/historians.  Thomas and I met via Zoom to engage with Weidenfeld's complex and contradictory nature. Topics, titles and title-holders touched on include: the dark arts of publishing; Top Gun: Maverick; cunnilingus; Ann Getty; loneliness; consensual sex; Saul Bellow and keeping authors in the fold; Lolita, free expression, and courting controversy; The Double Helix and legal reads; living large; the CIA; getting bailed out; Henry Kissinger; vanity projects; partnering with foreign publishers; Zionism, Israel and the Netanyahus; Sir Max Hastings; internationalism; hedgehogs and foxes; Grove Press; cuckolding, and jealousy; energy, stamina and charm; books building bridges between people; politics trumping publishing; and not cutting yourself off from your enemies.   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

John Sargent was too young to fight in WW ll but he spent years battling Amazon and Google in the trenches on behalf of publishers and authors, protecting copyright and defending book prices.John grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Over forty years he worked at six publishing companies, including Simon & Schuster where he was the publisher of the Children’s Division, and Dorling Kindersley where he was CEO. For the last half of his career he was the CEO of Macmillan. He’s the author of three children’s books and is currently chairman of The Ocean Conservancy. We met via Zoom to talk about some of the fights he’s had over the years and other stories presented in his new memoir entitled Turning Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher. We also talk about crying and bravery, McDonald’s, Monika Lewinsky, George Bush Sr., suicide, Donald Trump, f*****g sea urchins, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Joshua Doležal is a writer and award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience in publishing and editing. His mentor was Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner. Josh's work has appeared in more than 30 magazines including The Kenyon Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His memoir Down from the Mountain Top: From Belief to Belonging was short-listed for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize. He writes at The Recovering Academic on Substack, AND...he's a “book coach”. What’s a book coach? We met via Zoom to answer this question. Topics discussed include: the roles of a book coach and the qualifications you need to be one; writing tools that Josh recommends his clients use; the concept of defamiliarization; horror films and the element of surprise; three-step strategies for drafting manuscripts; Lisa Cron; James Paterson; turning points, resolutions and reckonings; tent poles and cairns; the importance of discovering things while you write; literary agents; advice for me on my podcast catalogue “book” project; Sting's backlist; pertinent questions to ask yourself if you want to write a book, such as: ‘why are you writing this book?’ and ‘why should readers care?’; plus, much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

James Daunt calls him "the best of the best in U.K. publishing, constantly challenging the industry to move on when it drags its feet." Listen to my conversation with Andrew Franklin to learn why.Andrew is founder and, until recently, publisher of Profile Books, an award-winning British independent publishing house which launched in 1996. Best-selling authors on its list include Mary Beard, Margaret Macmillan, Simon Garfield (Just my Type), and Lynne Truss, whose Eats, Shoots, Leaves (2003) sold more than three million copies worldwide and won Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2004. Serpent’s Tail, founded by Pete Ayrton in 1986, became an imprint of Profile in 2007. It publishes distinctive, award-winning international fiction. Viper Books, a crime imprint, was added in 2019.I met with Andrew at Profile's offices in London. We talk about, among other things, how much he made off Eats, Shoots, Leaves; selling paperbacks at Hatchards; Tim Waterstone; my tee-shirt; admiration as a key component of successful publishing; conviction and effort, judgement and horse-racing; taste and fashion; tee-shirt designer briefs; "content before commerce;" risk; rom-com; Hilary Mantel; the importance of style versus substance; Goethe; marketing, distribution and sales; taking books seriously; getting the right books into the right hands; freedom of the press; Butler to the World; non-conformism; and Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome. You might want to pay special attention to how Andrew speaks about Mary Beard and her book. And Margaret Macmillan for that matter. The enthusiasm, vigour, conviction. Belief. They're trademarks of all great publishers. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Here’s how the Carcanet Press website describes him: Michael Schmidt FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel, The Colonist (1981), about a boy’s childhood in Mexico. He is general editor of PN Review and founder as well as managing director of Carcanet Press. He has been applying his judgement publishing poetry and fiction for more than fifty years “discovering” and rediscovering, along the way, many of the greatest writers of our age. We met at the Carcanet offices in Manchester to talk about, among others things, what he does; Germans in Mexico; the love of poetry; The Harvard Advocate; magazines as good tools for book editors; the importance of the past; the difference between editing books and magazines; poets John Ashbery and Edgell Rickword; writers starting on the left; generous patrons: Baron Robert Gavron; prosody; syllabics; leaving room for the reader; overproduction being a straight path to bankruptcy; an education at Oxford; Milton; the Understanding Poetry anthology; writing letters; the centrality of politics; notions of balance and continuity; principles of permanence and change; the difference between taste and judgement; catalysts; the Yiddish saying: “One word is not enough, two is too many.” Changing literary culture; Wallace Stevens; enhancing, extending and revitalizing the language…all this in tandem with a chorus of Manchester trams piping in, in the background, throughout the conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is one of the great libraries of the world: a research powerhouse and a major cultural institution. It’s housed in a magnificent, purpose-built ‘book cathedral’ in Manchester, England. John Hodgson is Associate Director Curatorial Practices at the University of Manchester. In his role at Rylands, John “leads a team of librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, imaging specialists, and experts in public and academic engagement.”We met in his office to talk about, among other things, the history of this great Library and his role as one of its leaders; about its collections; about slavery, pop music and Bibles; about marginalia and provenance and humanitarian agencies; about equal access and Zoom consultations; Elizabeth Gaskell, Enriqueta Rylands and Queen Victoria; the Huntington Library; gatekeepers; the difficulty of preserving correspondence over social media; Ian Curtis lyrics; the Napoleonic Wars; diversity, and the responsibility of judging what parts of “history” are worth preserving. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Andrew Nash “is Reader in Book History at the Institute of English Studies, University of London” (a leading book history scholar in other words) and Director of the London Rare Books School.We sat down in the stacks at the Mark Longman "Books about Books" Library at the University of Reading (well, actually the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading which is somehow connected to the University and its publishers' archives collections) to talk about a course Andrew teaches ​at the London Rare Book School on how to use/work with publishers' archives.Th​ough this topic may sound a ​tad niche, even for this podcast, it's not. Andrew makes the convincing ​c​ase that publishers' archives are in fact ​of interest to many scholars, and have valu​e precisely because they can be studied from many​ different economic, social, ​and cultural​ perspectives. Publishers' archives​ yield, among other things, fascinating, detailed information about how knowledge and "culture" is “made public” in society. They’re not just about author-publisher correspondence​s, though these in themselves are justly recognized and valued as essential documents of cultural heritage, no, they’re about providing scholars, and the world at large, with rich source documentation from which all of us can better understand...yes, everything!Archives referenced during our conversation include those of Allen & Unwin, Chatto and Windus, Longmans, John Murray, George Routledge, and The Hogarth Press. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Sir Tim Waterstone revolutionized bookselling in Britain and changed the country's cultural landscape. He also wrote a memoir, called The Face Pressed Against a Window (Atlantic, 2019). We met at The Garrick Club in London to talk about the book, and about how he accomplished what he accomplished. Topics covered in our conversation include Tim's troubled relationship with his father, his eight children, the creative strategy behind growing the Waterstones empire (starting in 1982); an epiphany in Cambridge’s Heffers Bookshop; Waterstones' "happy" family; W.H. Smith, James Daunt, author support, a combative attitude; offering a huge range of titles for sale and staying open longer hours; Miss Santoro's bookshop in Crowborough; seeing a market and making accessible an unprecedented selection of literature; the brilliance of the John Sandoe Bookshop in Chelsea; the "perfect stock, perfect staff, perfect control" mantra, and the importance of book sales per square foot.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

When deciding who to interview for The Biblio File podcast I largely go with “best practitioners” who I admire. Steven Temple (1947-2023) was one of the antiquarian book dealers I admired the most. His appreciation and knowledge of the books that constitute Canadian literature and his dedication to documenting their unique characteristics was unparalleled. He was one of the very first used/antiquarian booksellers I interviewed for podcast. This creaky old conversation deals specifically with what Steven did in his day-to-day work. We cover a range of activities, including identifying issue points, and how he went about discovering his “little secrets;” competition, and how he tended, quite reasonably, to withhold little-known details when listing books online; about the red and blue cloth boards on early editions of Who Has Seen the Wind, about Morley Callaghan, and Ernest Hemingway; fox-hunting books and the buying opportunity they present; William Morris; collecting with the heart; the joy of investigating the books you own...Fast forward about ten years and I’m with Steven again this time at his home in Welland, Ontario. He’d moved his business down to the “rust belt” from his former haunt at the corner of Queen and Spadina in Toronto. Got a nice shot of him on his porch (above). Here we examine more closely his penchant for finding lost Canadian literature (mostly online by this time); the pleasure he took in researching, identifying and tracking down obscure Canadian literary titles; his enthusiasm for exploring new, different collecting paths; and the thrill he experienced discovering, locating and making hitherto unknown Canadian books available to those smart enough to recognize their value. We finish off by “un-leaning” a cocked book and bantering a bit about some of the titles I’d brought in for Steve to have a look at. R.I.P.. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Chris Gribble moved to Norwich from Manchester (where, among other things, he’d worked with Michael Schmidt at Carcanet Press) in 2006 to join a regional literary arts organization. Here he had a vision and, after a time, helped turn the place into the UK's National Centre for Writing. Then he spearheaded a successful effort to get Norwich designated as England’s first UNESCO City of Literature. These impressive book-related accomplishments were achieved largely through the discovery and telling of stories Chris told me. Over the years he excavated loads of little local literary stories and crafted them into one strong, persuasive narrative arc that features place, yes, but also, more broadly, the many social, economic and personal benefits that derive from the practice of writing. We met in the soon to be 600-year old Dragon Hall, a space in Norwich that the NCW calls home, to talk about the power of story-telling - stories as machines that change the world; ways of building literary organizations through coalitions; Norwich's rich history of immigration and dissent and its impressive list of literary firsts, including its connection to the novel Black Beauty, one of the first-ever works of animal advocacy, a surprising example of potent, successful behavioral change-making propaganda at work; about writing and mental well-being, and about the broad positive impact that books and writing have on place and society. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

I was in Ireland recently to interview two of the best novelists on the face of the planet. John Banville, in Dublin, and David Mitchell, in Cork. As a cost-cutting measure I decided to ask them both the same questions:What do you do?How do you do it?Why do you do it? And:Why does it matter?I got diametrically opposed answers. So much for my cherished ambition of capturing definitive, unified explanations of what the best novelists (in this case) do, and how they do it at the dawn of the 21st century.David Mitchell is compelled to make narrative. Better and better narrative. He are his novels, in order: * Ghostwritten (1999)* Number9Dream (2001)* Cloud Atlas (2004)* Black Swan Green (2006)* The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)* The Bone Clocks (2014)* Slade House (2015)* Utopia Avenue (2020)Ghostwritten takes place all over the world - ‘from Okinawa to Mongolia to New York City’ and is told in interconnecting stories by nine different narrators. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. number9dream and Cloud Atlas were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003 David was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.’ In 2007 Time magazine included him among their 100 Most Influential People in The World. In 2018 he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work. In other words, David is a best practitioner. He lives about an hour's drive from Cork. We met downtown for a taste of the city and a bite to eat. The better part of our afternoon was spent chatting about love and literature, and searching for a quiet place where we could clock our Biblio File best-practitioner conversation. Lovely, colourful city Cork. Tad noisy. We don’t talk much about specific books. We do, however, analyse the grand writing endeavour, attempting together to get at exactly how David has gone about creating his wonderful Balzacian oeuvre.  Stay tuned for the Biblio File Back-story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Early on in this conversation there's a dead patch. The mic didn't pick up the glorious seagull call that comes reverberating down the chimney right into the room John Banville and I were sitting in [This’ll give you a flavour. Recorded it in Liverpool the other day]:   John Banville is, among other things, an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter who hates his own work. He's won a ton of prizes ( "hundreds") including the Booker in 2005 for The Sea. He's currently waiting on the Nobel. John published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971, and his first book, a collection of short-stories called Long Lankin, in 1970. He's also written a string of popular crime novels. We met at his home in Howth; Howth, as you’ll know, is located near the place in Ulysses where James Joyce has Molly Bloom saying:"…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountains yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes…""…I was a Flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him and yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."John mentions what a curse it is to have Joyce, and Yeats (who, as you’ll also know, wooed Maude Gonne on Howth Head), et al, writing like this, constantly looming over you in the rearview mirror; I follow up with the regular drill, asking John: what do you do, how do you do it, why do you do it, and why does it matter? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Last year I interviewed Margaret Atwood about "the role" of the writer. No such thing she informed me. So we talked about the "non-role." Combatative she is. Just like Tim Parks. He talks with me here about the other end of the spectrum, the reader. How to be a better one. I want him to be prescriptive, he won’t. But he does provide a lot of excellent insights, despite his resistence. Tim is an author, essayist, and translator. He was born in Manchester in 1954, grew up in London, and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. Not sure where or if he graduated from anywhere, but no matter. He's written 19 novels including Europa, Destiny, and most recently Hotel Milano, plus numerous works of non-fiction, including Where I'm Reading From, which we reference during our conversation. He's a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. Aside from his own writing he has translated works by Moravia, Pavese, Calvino, Machiavelli and Leopardi from Italian into English. He's a very astute reader. A best practitioner I'd say, which makes him eligible to be a Biblio File podcast guest - given that our mission is to interview the best in the world of books. I invited him to talk about how "best" to go about reading a book. We talk about Borges's essays - notably one on James Joyce's perfect reader; an author's manner of addressing the reader, what the reader brings to the text, having an open attitude about what you read; Thomas Hardy; D.H. Lawrence as one of Hardy's best readers; Mortimer Adler; being argumentative, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Marta Sylvestrova is a curator and art critic and has headed the graphic design department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, since 1986. She is a graduate of Masaryk University where she studied art history, and has, over the years, been involved in the organizing of many Brno Biennieles. They feature and evaluate graphic designs from around the world every two years, alternating for many years, between celebration of book jacket design and poster design. It closed, somewhat controversially, in 2018,I went to Brno to talk to Marta about this controversy, but also, primarily, to talk about a big, beautiful four kilogram exhibition catalogue she edited 20 years ago entitled Czech Film Posters of the 20th Century, published in 2004 by the Moravian Gallery.   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was a capital markets lawyer. He currently serves as Executive Chair of the Booksellers Association of UK and Ireland.  We spoke via Zoom about his innovative "Reading Spas," about approaching customers, and reading related to passions and careers; other topics discussed include: themed displays, arrogant book selection, whether or not the bookselling model is broken, the Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, honeymoons, butchery novels, work-related reading lists, paying attention to detail, biblio-therapy, work ethics, a bookshop's personality, “the browse,” and way more.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Ricky Cavallero was CEO of the Spanish-language publisher Random House Mondadori for eight years. In 1995 he joined Mondadori as Director of Marketing Books; two years later he was appointed General Manager of the Spanish subsidiary and launched the Alexandros trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi which became a huge best-seller.In 1999 he inaugurated the Grijalbo Mondadori bookshop in Havana​. ​In 2000 he returned to Italy as director of Books Edizioni Mondadori. The following year, the Random House Mondadori joint venture was established ​and Cavallero assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer​, initially ​based in New York and then, from 2004, in Barcelona.​ ​​In 2010 ​he was appointed ​General Manage​​r​ of​ Libri Trade Mondadori and Chief Executive Officer of Einaudi​, under which the ​Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Frassinelli houses​ operated.​ ​​In 2016​ he launched a new venture, founding his own house,​ called SEM - Società Editrice Milanese.​ He sold it in the Spring of 2023. We met in Milan to talk about his take on book publishing. Topics covered include Libya, the Hoepli bookstore in Milan, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, nipples, different ways of looking at Latin America, atlases, nationalism, the fun of hitting the big one, Sonny Mehta, buying Fifty Shades of Grey, the impact of Covid, travel and understanding the world, meeting people, diversity, Africa, new writers, exiles and revolutions, bars, interesting people, getting 'out there;' listening, and asking questions, participating in life, partying, SEM, weekly dinners being a better investment than advertising, jazz music, Verso Bar and Bookshop in Milan, jamming with Ken Follett, offering stages for new voices, and giving birth. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Matteo Columbo is Margaret Atwood's publicist and personal magician at the Ponte alle Grazie publishing house in Italy. We met in Milan to discuss, among other things, the relationship between magic and publicity, the things that Margaret's handlers insist must be present in her hotel rooms; banana tricks, surprises, examples of how to gain the attention of journalists, Ponte alle Grazie's eclectic backlist, Luigi Spagnol, books as unique entities, the impact of Margaret's in-person Italian appearances, comparisons between publicity and photography; trustworthiness, syntax, and more.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Maria Hamrefors was appointed chairwoman of the Swedish Booksellers Association in 2019 after a long career in the book industry. Previous positions include CEO of Akademibokhandeln (Sweden’s B&N), CEO of Bokus, CEO of Norstedts Publishing Group, CEO of Thomson Corp in Sweden and director of Sweet & Maxwell Group in the UK. She is the treasurer of the European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF) and a member of the EIBF executive committee.​ We met at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague last month to talk about, among other things, how to turn around a chain bookstore, difficult cost cutting decisions, showing books face out, active curation, customer clubs, loyalty, fourth generation family businesses, ​discovering "best" information, trust, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, shared love of books, and the best life advice ever.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Putin is murdering Ukrainians. Xi is likely perpetrating a genocide on the Uyghurs. He's also threatening to murder Taiwanese, and he's crushing democracy in Hong Kong. Trump is ignoring the rule of law. Florida is censoring, if not burning, books.Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why have I interviewed more than 600 best practitioners about “the book”? Well precisely, in a roundabout way, to help stop these things types of things from happening; to help others better create and fashion good, big, complex ideas and make them public, get them discussed, motivate people to act on them, and ultimate to get governments to make the world a better, safer place because of them.These are dangerous times. Books and bookstores and what they accomplish, help to make the world a less dangerous place. Italians understand this, and their government has done something about it.I met Barbara Hoepli in Prague last month at the RISE Bookselling Conference. She'd just delivered a talk on the Italian bookselling business which referenced Italy's Levi (Fixed Price) Law. It limits the size of discounts that can be "levied" on books sold in the country. The law is designed to help grow and support the book sector, and literacy, and culture - tangible proof, it is, of the importance Italians assign to books and bookstores in their society.I figured it was worth talking with Barbara, not only because she has a beautiful voice and accent, but, primarily, because she's been in the book business all of her life directing both a major educational publishing house and a sizeable bookstore in Milan. We talk here about, among other things, market regulation, books being the cornerstone of our society, learning from the past, the name "Barbara," her family's 150 year history with books, and how books help us to grow and create.And yes, I left in the sound of her phone ringing (apologies, it's loud and startling). I figure it provides an extra peel of information - one that helps the listener better understand who she, Barbara, is as a person. Maybe not. You tell me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

We get into what "good" means, how a new model of bookselling might be funded; establishing new institutions and supporting the cause; about the ephemeral and the eternal, stars and blossoming fruit trees, William Blake, Robert Musil, mammon, Socrates learning to play the flute, the gift of finding something, or one, to love and knowing that this too shall pass; about the joys of "the browse," and thrift stores; capitalism, socialism, what people value, and civic-mindedness; Amazon, and underpaid work; James Daunt; Blundstones; old cowboy shirts, "slow time," Stendhal; bottling enthusiasm, Leon Forrest's Divine Days, Jaipur, and so much more. THE BIBLIO FILE is a podcast about "the book," and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging, long-form conversations with best practitioners inside the book trade and out - from writer to reader. Why listen? The hope is that it will help you to read, write, publish, edit, design, and collect better, and improve how you communicate serious, big, necessary, new, good ideas and stories... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

About a month ago I watched a documentary entitled Capital in the 21st Century. It was pretty riveting, describing much of what, and how, I've been thinking  over the past few years about the American take-over of Canada, and the belief that the country "developed" largely because the very rich were too lazy, risk-averse and unpatriotic to invest in their own country, preferring instead to let the more adventurous Americans do the heavy lifting in exchange for a commission - collected by bankers, accountants and lawyers - which was then sent offshore, where returns were better, and taxes lower or non-existent. The documentary, based on French economist Thomas Piketty's best-selling book of the same name (Harvard University Press, 2014) - a copy of which I've just bought for the second time - tells the story of how fights over capital resulted in two world wars, followed by a mid-century golden period during which the wild beast was tamed and the promise of a merit-based economic system, among other things, was briefly realized, until the animal was unleashed again thanks to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Today inequality is at the same frightful extremes experienced prior to the world wars. Will we repeat the same devastating mistakes, knowing what we now know? The film is a warning; and director Justin Pemberton delivers it with all the power of his medium. I talk with the New Zealander (!) about how he went about converting Piketty's startling 800-page narrative of capitalism's past, present and future, into a fast-paced, thrilling, persuasive, on-screen polemic.   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Is failure an inherent part of the writing "enterprise"? Yes, I'd say, this is undoubtedly true. If seen, however, solely as an "exercise" in itself, does this still hold true? I'm not quite so sure.These are the axes along which I tread during my conversation with Stephen Marche about his valuable new book On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, an essay published by Biblioasis. We talk about, among other things, fulfillment, learning, self-knowledge, horse-feathers, attention, Jesus, Beckett, privacy, connection, writing and failure of course, intention, recognition, fame, meaning, communication, money, futility, perseverance, success, publishing, expletives, essays, Confucius, Socrates, Samuel Johnson, depression, mental health and illness, comfort, getting your balls cut off, fame, mock executions, resonance, rejection, and the cure for cosmic loneliness. nigelbeale.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Sasha Tochilovsky is a graphic designer, typographer, curator, teacher and head of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at the Cooper Union in New York City. We talk here about one of the greatest creative teams in magazine history: author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist Ralph Ginzburg and graphic designer and typographer Herb Lubalin. We rustle around in the work these two produced together in Eros, Fact and Avant Garde magazines during the 1960s, discussing magazine design, sex, risk, censorship, advertising, typography and the shape of language, U&lc (Upper & Lower Case) Magazine, lettering, aesthetics, humour, Marilyn Monroe, Bert Stern, JFK, Grace Kelly, and the vindictiveness of Robert Kennedy.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Andy Hughes is Senior Vice President of Production and Design at Knopf Doubleday, and I really wanted to know what he had to say.During a recent conversation with Lizzie Gottlieb about her new documentary film Turn Every Page, listen here, she mentioned that she regretted not being able to include what Andy had had to say about producing Bob Caro's books. So, I contacted Andy and asked him to give me the goods. He kindly agreed to talk.He's superb on what goes into the making of a good book. Going back 40+ years and returning to the present, he talks to me authoritatively about everything from hot metal and linotype machines, to mainframes and desktop computers; locked pages, repros and offset printing plates, to goldenrods, long galleys, and folded signatures; Smythe sewing and cloth cases to off-shore and laser printing, print on demand, paperless offices and remote proof-reading. Basically all the stages of book manufacturing, how they've evolved over the years that Caro has been writing books, and how the standards of production have and have not been maintained or replicated since that first edition of The Power Broker was published in 1974.Among many other things we learn that Caro has chosen not make e-book versions of his work available to the public.I love that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

​I booked a room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal through Hotwire a couple of days ago. When I arrived at the hotel the receptionist asked me for a $250 deposit for incidentals. Next morning, without my permission (sure, okay, it's likely buried in the small print) they charged my card an additional $200. I subsequently learned that this was because I'd booked a couple of massages at their spa. When I checked out they charged me for the massages and told me that I should see the $450 back on my card in 2-3 business days. Of course, this scam earns the hotel money at my expense. A tiny expense, but, when combined with all of the other visitors' tiny expenses, not tiny. This scam is similar to the one operated by the oil companies when they insist that you punch in the amount you think you'll need to spend filling your tank at their pumps. It's your money and time they're stealing. Peanuts per person, big coconuts together. Where's the government on this? The same place government is on poor banking services, the highest mobile phone rates in the world, and sky-high dairy prices. Nowhere. Canadian governments have abandoned Canadian consumers. Valets to the rich and big business they are; to an alarming degree.Which brings us to copyright legislation. Cravenly hidden in an omnibus Budget Bill (a tactic Trudeau swore he'd never use), Bill C-32 received royal assent on December 31, 2022. It extends copyright protection in Canada for writers and other creators from fifty to seventy years after they die. How does this benefit the public? It doesn't. Not at all. Does it provide added incentive for these authors to create and innovate? None. Does it help readers and researchers and teachers? No, it does the opposite. Lobbyists convinced the Trudeau government to extend copyright with one pathetic argument: that it brings Canada into compliance with other jurisdictions. Greed won out in other words. Now, no new works will come into the public domain in Canada for another twenty years. How does this affect books and readers, writers and publishers? I ask Michael Geist. He's a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School - so he should know. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

My GP took off on me last year. Landed some big gig in Geneva I think. He's a bright one. Not that I knew him very well. Only met him twice in six years. Anyhow, I went in for my tri-annual (once every three) check-up the other day. The nurse was pleasant. Told me he'd been working in the same clinic for 30 years. Adventurous, I thought. Then a student comes in. Also pleasant. Bit bland, but hey, I thought, it takes years to spice up character. Finally the resident/doctor arrives. Must've been in her mid-thirties. She was absolutely delightful. Smiling, smart, funny. What a difference she made. She lit up the room. Lit up the week.Same can be said of Lizzie Gottlieb when she appeared on the screen. My screen that is, on Zoom. ​​It was a delight to talk with her about Turn Every Page her new documentary (released December 30th, 2022 by Sony Classics). It features the 50-year relationship between writer Bob Caro, 87, and his editor Bob Gottlieb, 91.Turn Every Page has a delightful (yes, I know, I'm using it too much, but I figure if  Caro can overuse a mot juste  - "loom" in his case, according to Bob G. - so can I) soundtrack. It deftly conducts the viewer, and the two Bobs, through the film towards the pressing goal of completing Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. We see the two at work on the fifth and final volume of the book and in the process, learn about what they're both after: uncompromised (uncompromising?) excellence. The two are by nature industrious, and both have egos. Combine all of the above and you have the makings of both a classic book, and a very watchable documentary, one that gives you a feel for the magic in this unique relationship and a sense of the great joy that can be experienced between writer and editor as they make a book together.  What you get with this film is a whimsical, entertaining glimpse at a very special kind of quiet alchemy.I had such fun with this project: watching the film, twice, re-reading parts of Bob Gottlieb's memoir Avid Reader, conducting the interview, editing it, and then right afterwards, going out for a walk and listening to it. I hope your experience with the listening part is as "delightful" as mine was.Nigel Beale’s Biblio File is a reader/listener supported publication/podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Torosian has spent his life taking photographs, interviewing great photographers, and making fine press photography books. He's in the process of making another entitled Lumiere Press, Printer Savant and Other Stories to commemorate the establishment of the Lumiere Press Archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. It's full of life lessons and back-stories to each of the twenty-two books he has published over the decades. We sat down in his workshop, behind his house in Toronto, to talk about the book. Topics covered in this the first installment of a two part conversation include: photography, bookmaking, relentless exploration, 'general aesthetics,' cultivating aptitudes, the blossoming of the photography market, Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, decoding visual language, composition, respect, paying homage, the Ninth Street Show, Gordon Parks, learning as the key to existence, making every word count, the Paris Review's Writers at Work series, capturing the voice of the artist, the book as the medium of photography, and more.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

John Metcalf is angry that after working in Canada as a "storyteller, editor, novelist, essayist, and critic" for more than fifty years his books still only sell about 500 copies each. Regardless of this, he's made a significant contribution to Canadian literature through his editing, teaching, critiquing, compiling of anthologies, publishing, and promotion generally of Canadian writers and the short story form. His work is known for its satire, intense emotion and imagery. In fact, his whole career can be said - John says it himself in Temerity and Gall, the book we discuss here today - to have been an extended conversation with Ezra Pound's Imagism.In our chronological conversation we examine John's life (he was born in 1938) starting with England and his relationship with his father, clergyman Thomas Metcalf; we talk about John's work with Oberon Press, ECW, Porqupine's Quill, and Biblioasis; about him teaching in the Montreal school system and almost dying of boredom, about publishing textbooks, and drinking with Mordecai Richler; about Michael Macklem (some people think he was a dick); about early catastrophes with Jack David and Robert Lecker, a lack of communication with Tim Inkster, and a love of Dan Wells's ambition. It's not all just juicy Canadian publishing gossip however, we also discuss James Joyce and the advent of film, Hemingway's first short story and the misspelling of his name, the serious ideas that underpin John's writing and editorial practice, and the success he's enjoyed, over many decades, of getting important books published. And finally, in the end, there's his patient, respectful wife Myrna working in the other room. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe