Still Curious George

With 60 years of publishing under his belt, it's odd to realise that Lord George Weidenfeld's original intentions didn't involve books at all. Just after the Second World War, the Austrian Jewish emigre wanted to set up a magazine about international affairs, but paper rationing was such that to deceive paper controls it had to be published in hard covers. This duped the authorities into rating the company, Contact Books, as a serious book imprint, and got Weidenfeld the necessary allocation of paper.

"The whole thing was absurd," he says. "We produced editions until 1949, when we found it economically impossible to continue producing a magazine in book form. So Nigel Nicolson and I said 'let's be book publishers', without any experience."

The pair fell foul of book trade cynicism. "I have my black list and my white list," says Weidenfeld, seated in his grand apartment on Chelsea Embankment, surrounded by papal memorabilia, and the hundreds of books he's published over 60 years. "Victor Gollancz, Fred Warburg, and Mark Longman were all on my black list after saying they gave me a year and half before we foundered. They were very unpleasant."

This meant he felt all the more beholden to characters such as Stanley Unwin, from whom he received this piece of matchless wisdom: "Any book on Mary Queen of Scots will sell." Something Weidenfeld was to remember when publishing Antonia Fraser's bestselling Mary Queen of Scots. Fraser was one of his and Nicolson's first employees.

The second part of Unwin's advice--"No book about Latin American history will ever sell"--was perhaps less heeded. If anyone were to publish an obscure work on Latin American history it would be Weidenfeld. He is possessed of an extraordinary curiosity, and this, coupled with a inititially dismissive attitude from many literary agents, meant he had to be inventive. "I went out and said to Lady Longford that she should write a life of Victoria, asked Antonia Fraser why she wasn't writing a biography of Mary Queen of Scots, and told Stephen Spender that we would send him to the Middle East to write the story of collective farms."

Weidenfeld has been accused of signing up anyone he sits next to at dinner to write a book--and there have been many dinners, many parties, and many chance acquaintances persuaded to write for W&N. "The pattern in everything I do is networking--enlarging my network and finding subjects for people to write about. I have found it very stimulating finding important books in the field of current history."

Sixty years ago he was quick to realise the earning potential of series publishing, bringing out the History of Civilization series in around 40 volumes, the History of Religion, which went to 12 volumes, and others including Great Rivers and The Law in Context.

"Of the three firms founded by refugees, you could say that Thames&Hudson were production geniuses, with great experience in design. André Deutsch was more sales driven--he knew all the booksellers by their first names. But I was driven particularly by ideas, and by developing co-production arrangements with other publishers."

These series deals with international partners brought in much-needed cash: "advances from international publishers were more than sufficient to keep us running", and enabled W&N "to hoist itself fairly quickly into a size and level of publishing that was quite impressive". The coedition model established by Weidenfeld is still used in a similar format today--he describes W&N as the pioneer of co-production "outside the field of pure art".

But a one-off title nearly proved disastrous. The inside story of Hitler's political espionage network The Secret Front, written in 1953 by a former member of the German Secret Service, provoked a libel case that nearly broke W&N.

"Madame C in Brazil, described in the book as a call girl who had affairs with Nazi leaders, wanted to sue us for damages, saying that not a word was true. To be fair, her husband divorced her because of the book and her Hollywood contract was cancelled. You can understand why she felt aggrieved."

A tenacious Weidenfeld tracked down the driver who delivered the young lady (as he courteously describes her) to her midnight assignments, and the lawsuit was withdrawn.

The 1959 publication of Lolita (to great controversy) also helped W&N establish itself as a serious player in the publishing world. Described at the time by the Sunday Express as "sheer unrestrained pornography", Weidenfeld took a risk in publishing the book when moral censorship in Britain was riding high. But Lolita took the literary world by storm and became the firm's first significant bestseller.

"Nabokov was one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met, very pedantic, with a wonderful subtle wit," Weidenfeld recalls. "He liked to see very few people, as he didn't want to dilute his capacity for talking to another person. I paid homage to him twice a year, in his residence in a hotel in Monterrey. He was a great hater and a great admirer. He thought John Updike was a great writer, but thought Saul Bellow was bad, and immortalised him in several of his novels."

Peaks and troughs

W&N's fiction list has peaked and troughed over the years--it has included the likes of Margaret Drabble (whose first novel was discovered in the slushpile), Mary McCarthy, and the despised Saul Bellow. "It petered out because so many people died," explains Weidenfeld. "You need the right editors to refresh a list--it goes in cycles."

He is pleased with the current state of W&N's fiction, which includes Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind: "I love the Richard&Judy phenomenon--the book trade needs this stimulantia."

His own interests lean heavily towards non-fiction. Almost an entire wall of his study is lined with books about the Third Reich and the Second World War--at age 23 he combined a full-time job broadcasting for the BBC about enemy propaganda during the war with writing a book, The Goebbels Experiment. He mentions in passing that he has seen "Downfall", the recent film about Hitler's last days, three times. Another lifelong interest is the Catholic church--histories, memoirs and portraits of Popes jostle for study space.

This preference for non-fiction may have led to a rejection of Jeffrey Archer's account of his bankruptcy: "Jonathan Aiken introduced me to Archer [who was looking for a book deal]. I pontificated, saying it was a waste of time to write his story as fiction." Archer wrote Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less anyway: "some of these you just have to put down to experience".

Weidenfeld admits to a certain narrow-minded focus. He was offered one of George Orwell's most famous essays--"Politics and the English Language"--for an issue of his magazine, but felt it "didn't fit in with the theme of the magazine".

Yet he has, on numerous occasions, got it right, as evidenced by the neat stack of Pope John Paul II's Memory and Identity piled on the table in front of him. Another publishing maxim, this time one of Weidenfeld's own: "Anything that comes from the Pope will be bought."

His religious interests have run alongside history and science: he cites Double Helix by J D Watson as "one of the most important books I've published". He snapped up the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA after a call from the publisher at Harvard University Press: "He told me to come straight away to Boston, without explaining why. I took the next plane, and he showed me Double Helix, rejected by HUP because it told the story of what really happens in the world of science."

Then there was According to the Rolling Stones, signed up through friendship with Mick Jagger's agent. "I personally can't bear modern pop music, but I know Mick Jagger and he's an interesting man."

Semi-detached role

Weidenfeld has taken a semi-detached role at W&N since Anthony Cheetham bought the company for around £4m in 1991. But at age 86, he still works a 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. day at Orion when he's in London, which isn't all that often.

Some 25 trips abroad this year--"I have to say that it's sometimes more stressful having to pass through Trafalgar Square four times a day than sitting on a plane to the States or a train to Paris"--will see him indulge those interests which lie outside publishing.

A non-exhaustive list of these would include writing a weekly lead opinion column for German newspaper Die Welt, setting up a postgraduate network bringing 10 European universities closer together, and organising conferences for high-powered European politicians, academics and business leaders.

All of which provide ample opportunities for new book ideas: "If I were to draw a general conclusion, it's a question of using my diversity of access to its best purpose, to create books. And to give the opportunity to authors to experience different worlds, different circles."

Weidenfeld

1919 Born in Vienna

1938 Emigrated to UK from Austria

1939 monitoring job with the BBC Overseas Intelligence

1942 news department of BBC World Service

1946 launches Contact Books

1948 sets up Weidenfeld&Nicolson with Nigel Nicolson

1949 first list appears

1991 Antony Cheetham founds Orion Books and buys Weidenfeld&Nicolson

1998 Hachette buys Orion

Alison Bone