Eastbourne Book Buys: Victor Canning's Birds of a Feather (Heinemann, 1985) and the Last of Tome

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 12 June 2015.

We had a family outing to Eastbourne a couple of weeks ago, the highlight of which was undoubtedly Edie's first proper experience of paddling in the sea:

Which, after a cautious start – she was initially reluctant to put her feet down on the wet squelchy sand at the water's edge – entailed much squealing and dashing back and forth into the lapping waves. But as much fun as that was, almost as thrilling in its own way, at least for me (although rather less so, I imagine, for Edie and Rachel), was the acquisition of this:

A 1985 Heinemann first edition of Victor Canning's Birds a Feather, which I bought in Eastbourne secondhand bookshop institution Camilla's, priced £4.50. The final novel in Canning's Birdcage espionage series, it was the only one I was missing in first (non-ex-library copies are quite hard to come by), so when I spied it on the shelves in the basement of Camilla's – luckily it was on one of the higher shelves, otherwise it would've been obscured by the piles of books that sit on the floor in front of the lower third of the bookcases in the basement – I was delighted. Naturally I've added it to the Existential Ennui Victor Canning Birdcage First Edition Book Cover Gallery and to British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s.

But while Camilla's marches on in much the same fashion as it ever has – well, in my experience, in the half-dozen years I've been going there – another, more recent Eastbourne secondhand bookshop is breathing its last. Tome, which opened its doors on Terminus Road (an apt location in retrospect) near the seafront a few years ago, is closing – indeed may already have closed by the time I publish this post. I was alerted to this sorry state of affairs by Existential Ennui reader Gerald, so the trip to Eastbourne was motivated at least in part by a desire to have a last look at Tome's wares. Books were being packed in boxes on the day we were there, but there were still lots on display, all priced at 50p rather than the usual £2 (I do wonder whether that pricing policy was a factor in the closure), and though there wasn't anything I desperately wanted – I've raided Tome's shelves too thoroughly on a number of prior occasions – I still managed to find a few things of interest:

On the bottom row, a 1965 Hodder & Stoughon first edition of The Third Side of the Coin, Francis Clifford's tenth novel – quite uncommon in first that one – and a 1968 Jonathan Cape first edition of The Killing Season, the debut novel by John Redgate, alias actor Adam Kennedy; and on the top row, a 1981 Cape first edition of Once a Spy, Rennie Airth's second novel – also uncommon, not to mention pricey, in first (at least sixty quid on AbeBooks) – and a 1991 Picador first edition of The Mexican Tree Duck, James Crumley's fifth novel. A good illustration of the kinds of unexpected delights Tome invariably offered up, and why the place will be sorely missed. And as further illustration, here's a pile of books I bought in Tome last year – including a signed 2006 No Exit Press first of James Sallis's Drive – as photographed on Eastbourne beach shortly after (and posted on Twitter, but not, heretofore, on Existential Ennui):

And here's Edie – who at two years old has lived her entire life with Tome in it, to the extent that on one occasion she even ate her lunch in the place (and on another occasion, did a poo there) – photobombing:

Cheerio then, Tome. And thanks for all the books.

William Haggard's Colonel Charles Russell Spy Novels in British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s

It's been nearly two years since I last devoted a post to William Haggard, an author fellow spy novelist Anthony Price once memorably described as "more right wing than even me!" But though I haven't written about Haggard at any length for a while – and in truth am not planning to do so now either – I have been quietly collecting cheap first editions of his Colonel Charles Russell spy series when I see them. I must have acquired another five since I posted this cover gallery in 2011, and it so happens that three of them meet the criteria for my recently established British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s gallery (in which I'd already deposited a pair of Haggard covers: The Bitter Harvest, 1971, and Yesterday's Enemy, 1975) – i.e. they're thrillers, and they were published in the '70s. And since as of Friday British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s needed just three books to bring the number of covers therein up to 110, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to blog about them, however briefly. And they are:

The Old Masters, the fifteenth instalment in the twenty-six-book Colonel Russell series, published in hardback by Cassell in 1973, jacket design by Design Practitioners. I can't recall now where I bought this copy – or indeed an increasing number of the secondhand books I've bought over the past few years and then stowed on my 'to-blog-about' shelves. I have a feeling I got it from Eastbourne's excellent Tome (where secondhand books are two pound a pop), so for the sake of expediency let's just say that is where I got it, and that I got these ones there too:

The Scorpion's Tail, the sixteenth Colonel Russell novel, published in hardback by Cassell in 1975, jacket photograph by Michael Lyster and further credited to the Zoological Society of London, and:

The Poison People, the eighteenth Colonel Russell novel, published in hardback by Cassell in 1978, dust jacket uncredited. Interesting thing about this one is, as noted by commenter 'faithful researcher' in March last year, the plot hinges on the death of a chap named Harry Maxim – which makes ones wonder if perhaps Gavin Lyall read Haggard.

I've loads more additions to British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s lined up, but next I'm turning to another writer of '70s spy fiction – of the televisual variety.

The Callan Spy Thriller Series of Novels by Writer and Creator James Mitchell (Jenkins / Hamilton / Severn House, 1969–2002)

Last week saw the return to print after nearly forty years of the first two instalments in author and television writer James Mitchell's five-book spin-off series of novels from his Edward Woodward-starring TV series Callan, courtesy of Mike Ripley's Top Notch Thrillers imprint (not to mention their eBook debuts too). I reviewed the first of those, 1969's A Magnum for Schneider, alias A Red File for Callan (its US title), alias Callan (it was reissued by Corgi in 1974 to tie in with the Callan movie), originally published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins, on Friday; now I thought we could take a look at some of the other Callan first editions I've acquired, beginning with the second Callan novel:

Russian Roulette, published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton in 1973, with a dust jacket photograph credited to Beverly Lebarrow, alias Beverley le Barrow, alias former glamour photographer Beverley Goodway – at least, I believe "Beverley le Barrow" to be an alias of Beverley Goodway; an anonymous commenter on my post about the James Bond Panther paperbacks begs to differ, despite the information presented in that post. Anyway, Russian Roulette was the other Callan novel reissued by Top Notch Thrillers last week, and sees recalcitrant assassin David Callan offered up to the Russians by his former employers at British Intelligence outfit the Section as a trade for a captured agent.

By the time Russian Roulette was originally published the Callan TV series had effectively ended (as mentioned above, it was revived for the big screen in 1974 – that film telling the same story as the 1967 Callan TV pilot and A Magnum for Schneider – and was further revived in 1981 as a TV movie). But James Mitchell had been a novelist longer than he'd been a television writer – his first novel, A Time for Murder, written under the pen name Patrick O McGuire, was published in 1955 by Hammond, whereas his debut television drama, the Armchair Theatre production Flight from Treason, adapted by Mitchell from his own novel (A Way Back, Peter Davies, 1959), was broadcast in 1960 – and so it was natural for him to extend Callan's life in the novel format. Which he did again in 1974:

with Death and Bright Water, again published by Hamilton (dust jacket design uncredited, although the photo on the front is a publicity shot from the Callan movie), sending Callan "and the faithful, odoriferous Lonely", as the jacket flap copy puts it, to Crete. While British first editions of Russian Roulette are relatively easy to come by these days, British firsts of Death and Bright Water aren't quite so common, at least not in the UK; I can see just one (non ex-library) copy for sale online at present, although there are others available from Australian and American sellers. Oddly enough I've ended up with two copies of the Hamilton first – one bought in the late lamented Dim and Distant in Heathfield (now Tome in Eastbourne), one bought... for the life of me I can't remember where – so if anyone reading this is looking for one, drop me a line.

I have just the one copy of the Hamilton first of the next Callan novel, however, as it's in even shorter supply:

Smear Job, published by Hamilton in 1975, dust jacket design by Ken Reilly (incorporating the same promotional image from the Callan movie as Death and Bright Water). This one sees Callan and Lonely pursuing, according to the jacket flap copy, "quieter, if less lucrative careers in the world of personal security", an enterprise which takes them to Sicily, Las Vegas and Mexico.

Smear Job was published on the eve of arguably Mitchell's greatest success, the TV drama When the Boat Comes In (starring fellow north easterner James Bolam), which was broadcast on BBC1 to huge audiences from January 1976 to April 1981. This and various other TV endeavours – Goodbye Darling (1981), Spyship (1983) – and around a dozen standalone novels kept him preoccupied for the next twenty-five years or so, but he made a belated return to Callan just before his death in 2002 with a fifth novel, Bonfire Night, published by Severn House. I haven't yet secured a copy of that one – I'll doubtless post it when I do – but I have secured a number of the spy novels Mitchell published in the 1960s, pre-Callan, written under the nom de plume James Munro and starring gunrunner-turned-secret agent John Craig...

Francis Clifford's Honour the Shrine (Cape, 1953) & Helen MacInnes's Pray for a Brave Heart (Collins, 1955) Join Beautiful British Book Jackets

Let's take a look at the two latest additions to the still-expanding (these covers will take it up to 104 entries) Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery – the first one of which I could do with some assistance identifying the jacket designer:

Namely Honour the Shrine by Francis Clifford, published by Jonathan Cape in 1953. There's no credit on either flap and no signature that I can see; I did wonder if it might be by Val Biro, but I put it in front of Val at a Lewes Book Fair last year and he thought not. Mind you, when I asked Val to sign the jacket of Desmond Cory's Secret Ministry at an earlier Midhurst Book Fair, he told me that wasn't one of his wrappers either – until his agent, David Schutte, pointed out Val's signature in the bottom left corner (Val did, after all, design an estimated 3,000 dust jackets). Plus, Val was doing a little work for Cape around this period (as was Hans Tisdall, who also comes to mind as a possible culprit) – he designed the wrapper for the 1953 Cape first of Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope for one – so he could have misremembered. In any case, until confirmation is forthcoming, the cover is consigned to the "Designer Unknown" group at the bottom of Beautiful British Book Jacket Design.

No such confusion surrounds the book itself, however, at least not round these parts, because I've blogged about it before, in its 1957 Corgi paperback incarnation. Clifford's debut, and quite uncommon these days (there are barely a dozen copies in any edition on AbeBooks at present, none of those the Cape first), it's one of a number of the author's novels I've spotlighted – see also Time Is an Ambush (1962), The Green Fields of Eden (1963), The Hunting-Ground (1964) and The Naked Runner (1966) – the jackets from the first editions of all four of which are also featured in Beautiful British Book Jacket Design.

And there's little doubt as to who was responsible for the dust jacket design of the second new addition to the gallery, despite there once again being no credit on the flaps:

This is the British first edition of Pray for a Brave Heart by Helen Macinnes, published by Collins in 1955 and bought by me just the other week for two quid in the excellent Tome in Eastbourne. MacInnes's ninth novel, it's one of fourteen MacInnes spy thrillers that Titan Books have brought back into print since last year. The wrapper isn't, as I say, credited, but it does bear a signature: "Petty". That's almost certainly the Australian political cartoonist Bruce Petty, who evidently had a nice sideline designing jackets in the 1950s; other examples of his jacket work include a further three wrappers for Collins in 1955 – Jon Cleary's Justin Bayard, Laselle Gilman's The Dragon's Mouth and Kem Bennett's Dangerous Knowledge – along with Edward Maxwell's Quest for Pajaro (Heinemann, 1957), Tom Girtin's Not Entirely Serious (Hutchinson, 1958) and Robin Maugham's The Man with Two Shadows (Longmans, Green, 1958).

So, two further splendid duotone dust jackets for Beautiful British Book Jacket Design. And I'm not done with the gallery just yet...

Kingsley Amis and The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage (HarperCollins, 1997)

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

Thus far in this series of posts on Kingsley Amis we've had some spy fiction – The Anti-Death League and The Egyptologists – and some science fiction – the Amis-edited SF anthology Spectrum. Now it's time for some nonfiction, with a book I bought in secondhand bookshop Tome in Eastbourne, for just two quid (remarkably, all of their secondhand books are priced at two pounds):

A first edition of The King's English, published in hardback by HarperCollins in 1997, two years after Amis's death. It is, as the subtitle states, "A Guide to Modern Usage", and given that Kingsley Amis had a way with the written English word few could match in the twentieth century, you'd be hard pressed to think of a better guide. But that subtitle does make the book sound drearier, more pedagogical – not to mention considerably less witty – than it actually is. As Charles Moore points out in this 2011 Telegraph review (The King's English was reissued by Penguin that year): "...what does shine throughout is Kingsley’s love of his language. He is exact, but not pedantic. Even when making minute points about the letter of the law, he is really talking about its spirit." A good example of this might be the entry titled "Preposition at the end of a sentence", wherein Amis writes:

This is one of those fancied prohibitions (compare SPLIT INFINITIVE) dear to ignorant snobs. In this case they should be disregarded, and they mostly are, though the occasional stylistic derangement may suggest that a writer here and there still feels its force. It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with. As [H. W.] Fowler famously observed, 'The power of saying . . . People worth talking to instead of People with whom it is worth while to talk is not one to be lightly surrendered.' This time idiom and common sense have triumphed over obscurantism.

In his introduction to the 2011 edition of The King's English, Martin Amis makes a similar point to Charles Moore: "...those who remember [Kingsley] as a reactionary – or, if you prefer, as an apoplectic diehard – will be astonished to discover how unfogeyish he is. With remarkably few exceptions, he takes the sensible and centrist course. He is also deeply but unobtrusively learned. As a result, this is not a confining book but a liberating one." That said, there are some cases where the rules are immutable – apostrophes, for instance, where Amis père takes issue with the "greengrocer's apostrophe" and highlights common errors, such as inserting an apostrophe where none is needed. Even here, though, he's notably lenient, admitting that the "rules governing the use of this vexing little mark are evidently hard to master" and conceding that those "who mind their p's and q's must be tolerated".

The word "tolerance" isn't one generally associated with Kingsley Amis, at least in most people's minds – unless, perhaps, it's in regard to his levels of alcohol consumption – but anyone who's spent any amount of time with his writings will know that, like all of us, he was a complicated man. Take the entry titled "Gay", for example, which Martin Amis identifies as "perhaps the most stirring passage in the book": 

The use of this word as an adjective or noun applied to a homosexual has received unusually prolonged execration. The 'new' meaning has been generally current for years. Gay lib had made the revised Roget by 1987 and the word itself was listed in the 1988 COD under sense 5 as a homosexual... And yet in this very spring of 1995 some old curmudgeon is still frothing on about it in the public print and demanding the word "back" for proper heterosexual use...

...once a word is not only current but accepted willy-nilly in a meaning, no power on earth can throw it out. The slightest acquaintance with changes in a language, or a minimum of thought, will show this truth.

This time it is not a wholly unwelcome truth. The word gay is cheerful and hopeful, half a world away from the dismal clinical and punitive associations of homosexual. We lucky ones can afford to be generous with our much larger and richer vocabulary.

As Martin Amis notes: "An 'old curmudgeon': towards the end of his life, Kingsley was monotonously so described. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable defines curmudgeon as 'a grasping and miserly churl'. Whereas all careful readers of The King's English (and of his novels) will find themselves responding to a spirit of reckless generosity."

I'm not sure, however, that the phrase "a spirit of reckless generosity" could be applied to the final Kingsley Amis book I'll be looking at: a 1963 novel that some critics have pointed to as a prophetic portrait of Amis himself.