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Macmillan Together Newsletter 8: October 2019 The Newsletter of the Macmillan Network

News from Macmillan

Nature celebrates 150 years by Alysoun Sanders

On 3 November 1869 Alexander Macmillan wrote to his friend James MacLehose ‘Nature is to be published in London at 7.30… we start with 10 pages of advertisement… I think we will look nice.’

The Bath Chronicle & Weekly Gazette reported on 2 December 1869 ‘Messrs Macmillan have commenced issuing a new weekly illustrated journal of science under the title Nature, which is likely, as it deserves, to win its way with the people, and promote among them the interests of scientific study’.

From small beginnings under first editor (later Sir) Norman Lockyer, it has grown to become a highly respected international journal.

There have already been a number of events this year in celebration of this 150th anniversary and more are planned around 4 November. There will be a special anniversary issue as well as celebrations in Germany (at the Berlin Science Week) and China.

On 4 April, Nature editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper gave a keynote address at the Nature150 Anniversary symposium on The Future of Japanese Science held at Yasuda Auditorium of the University of Tokyo - one of a number of celebratory events in Japan where she was also interviewed on a national TV news programme.

On 25 June, 75 librarians and researchers from all over China and 32 Springer Nature staff from the UK, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong attended a conference on Nature’s 150 years and shared a celebratory cake!

There were also events at the Hay Festival and we have been sharing history through internal blogs and webinars.

See also pages 2 and 7

The Macmillan Together Network

The network, now of well over 200 former (and long-serving current) employees of Macmillan and Pan around the world, exists to share news about, and of interest to, former employees particularly relating to Macmillan history. This includes publication of this newsletter, putting members in touch with each other, and notification of deaths and funeral arrangements of former members of staff. If you, or others with whom you are in contact, would like to join, please email Alysoun Sanders with the subject line ‘Macmillan Together’ confirming that you/they are willing for your/their email address to be stored. The mailing list is held securely by the network administrators and newsletter editor and is password protected. No personal information is shared with a third party without consent. If at any time you wish your name to be removed contact Alysoun Sanders: a.sanders@macmillan.co.uk

In this issue:

News from Macmillan – page 1, 2

& 6

News of/from former colleagues –

page 3

Obituary: Jim Staines – page 3

Correspondence – page 4

About our Members – page 5/6

List of current members – page 18

Articles

Memories of Nature by Roger Woodham - page 7

The Four Lives of Alan Bott by John Handford - page 10

The Botts and the Byam Shaws by Nicholas Byam Shaw - page 13

Macmillan US Moves to New Quarters by Michael Flamini - page 14

What’s New at Springer Nature? by Gabrielle Williams Hamer - page 16

This issue edited by Steven

Kennedy

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News from Macmillan

Pan Macmillan moves to The Smithson by Alysoun Sanders On 9 September Pan Macmillan moved from offices in New Wharf Road, King’s Cross, where the company has been based since 2001, to The Smithson building in Clerkenwell. The new offices give staff a 50% increase in space and are designed for collaborative and project-based work. Alongside event spaces, there is a large refectory and top floor library space with panoramic views, plus 10 outdoor terraces. Pan Macmillan occupies the upper six floors as well as much of the ground floor. Part of the first floor is occupied by Macmillan’s Digital Science. The offices back onto St John’s Square, that traces its origins to the 12th century inner precinct of the priory of St John, the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitallers.

For more details of the new building and photos of the floors not

visible in this photo see the agents’ site here. The US trade divisions have also moved – see article on page 14.

Nature’s first conference: 1986 in Japan

Nature’s first-ever conference was held in Japan from 20-22 January 1986 and was devoted to the

theme Molecular biology becomes biotechnology. Held at the Keio Plaza Intercontinental Hotel, His

Imperial Highness Prince Hitachi addressed the opening ceremony. Speakers included Nobel Prize

winner, Walter Gilbert, Charles Weissmann, Stanley N Cohen and Susumu Tonegawa.

The conference welcome party 19 January 1986: participants include Peter Newmark, Yoshi Tadokoro, Alun Anderson, Nicky Byam Shaw, John Maddox, Liz Hughes and Ray Barker plus eminent scientists including several Nobel Prize winners. Many thanks to Liz for providing us with a copy of the picture.

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News of/from former colleagues

Obituary

Jim Staines by John Handford

Jim Staines died on 25 August, a few days after his eighty-eighth birthday. Both he and his late wife Pam served many years at Macmillan, and his son Chris met his future wife at our office.

A Londoner, Jim was evacuated early in the war, complaining that he learnt little at the Welsh-speaking school where he was sent. He returned in time to witness the Battle of Britain and the blitz, and to be blown off his feet by a V2 rocket - he escaped unscathed.

After National Service with tanks, he found work at St Martin’s Street as a town checker. This was one of many jobs that no longer exist today but were then vital to good service and involved checking town (i.e. central London) orders to ensure that booksellers' often not very clear instructions had been correctly interpreted. With the move to Basingstoke he was, together with many of his colleagues, uprooted from the city, working at the Houndmills site from its first day.

Promotion saw Jim in charge of the Registry, the department that kept a record of everything that had an ISBN. He and Pam enjoyed the social club, and both his son and daughter held their wedding receptions there. With increased computerization, Registry was decentralized, and Jim moved to Stock, where he monitored stock levels and handled imports retiring in 1991 after 39 years’ service.

Responses to the news of his death from former colleagues emphasized how gentle and caring he was - and generous to those he worked with

(and how large a constituency that was given the centrality of registry to book publishing).

In retirement, Jim read and travelled widely, and enjoyed the music of Glenn Miller. He made a remarkable recovery from an operation for bowel cancer in 2014, and in spite of this, he remained active almost to the end. He has left two children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Remembering Brenda Maddox by Tim Farmiloe

Brenda Maddox, the journalist and broadcaster, and the widow of Sir John Maddox, the twice editor of Nature, died on 16 June - Bloomsday fittingly for the author of Nora: the Real Life of Molly Bloom - and her funeral took place on 6 July near their farmhouse in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons. A memorial meeting, brilliantly conducted by their daughter Bronwen, was held at the Royal Society, London on October 3. There were short tributes, some accompanied by family photographs shown on a large screen, by, among others, Bronwen herself, her half-sister Imma, and their brother Bruno; her teenage daughter Laura gave a reading. A highlight of the occasion was Brenda’s carer Sarah recounting some of her wickedly funny bon mots. The large attendance, including many friends and former colleagues from The Times and The Economist, testified to Brenda’s great popularity.

Macmillan published two of her many books: George’s Ghosts (1999) looked at the erotic underpinnings of W. B. Yeats’ marriage and was, to quote a review, ‘tough, intelligent, unsentimental and frequently very funny’. George Eliot in Love (2010) was one of several biographies of women who excelled in a men's world. We were represented by Nicky Byam Shaw, who had delayed his return to Vermont to attend, long-time Nature Editor, now Springer Nature Editor in Chief, Sir Philip Campbell, Christopher Paterson, Peter Straus and myself. The meeting and ensuing reception, were a poignant concoction of tears and jokes, a fitting memorial for a very special person.

For the obituary in the Guardian with a fuller overview of

Brenda Maddox’s life and achievements, click here

Deaths

Sadly we have been notified of the following deaths.

Brenda Maddox – 16 June 2019

Jim Staines – 25 August 2019

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Correspondence

From Yoshi Tadokoro:

It was so nice to meet with Ken Derrick in Tokyo the other day after such a long interval, and thank you for inviting me to join a member of as a member of Macmillan Together.

Going through the newsletters, I have found so many old and good friends, recalling one by one with happy memories. I look forward to receiving the forthcoming issues and thank you so much for your wonderful service.

From Henry Gordon Bowdell:

I have lots of photos of friends and colleagues at Macmillan. I was in the Print Room in London and Basingstoke 1962 to 1991. Hoping you will put them in the Newsletter. I was very sorry to hear about my friend Roy Vango last year.

Here are a couple of Gordon’s photos of the first and second Macmillan floats (1965 and 1966 respectively) at the Basingstoke Carnival. Can anyone identify the participants? And would anyone who took part like to write up the experience for a future issue?

From Janet Curtis:

Enjoyed the latest newsletter - thank you - in particular, Jim’s article about the design studio. He has captured what it was like really well! In his third photo ‘Maureen’ is Maureen Buckley, who lives locally still.

Apologies for inadvertently omitting this email from the previous newsletter. Can you or anyone help with another picture circa 1972 unearthed in the Archive by Alysoun? Jim Turner and Bob Jones are on the right and far left is Denis Holland. But who is it in the back by the window?

From John Handford:

As I read Ian Jacobs’s account of Renaissance doorknockers and kindred matters in Newsletter 7, I was forcibly reminded of the array of firsts scored by The Dictionary of Art. But was theirs ‘Macmillan’s first ever computer network to manage workflow’? Macmillan Production Ltd certainly had a system that used a computer to manage workflow before 1985.

Leaning on the expertise and long memory of Howard Scott, I established that our Publishing Progress system, launched, we think in 1982, was the first computer driven workflow management system in the group. Its function was to replace the paper registry files and strip lists in the book publishing companies. However, it was not a network because it was hard-wired to its computer.

So it seems that Ian’s claim for the first network is valid, but we had the first workflow management system. News to share?

Please write in with news about what you have been up to and send e-mails and

letters on any subject of interest to network members to a.sanders@macmillan.co.uk

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About our Members Please send your entries for this feature for future issues to Alysoun Sanders with a recent photograph and the following information: Name; Dates at Macmillan; Division(s) worked in; Job(s) done plus a brief

paragraph on what you’ve done since.

Susie Doubtfire

At Macmillan: 29 July 1985 to 2 August 2019

I joined Macmillan as part of the penultimate (if not final) Youth Training Scheme led by Bernie

Smith. I was assigned to Brian McKenzie's Personnel team that then included Joan Joy,

Jane Terrapin and Jean Fowles. I moved over to Reception when Daphne Sadler took over Joan

Pinnell’s role when Joan retired.

In 1987, I believe, I moved to Bernie's new Personnel and Training team. The rest, as they

say, is history. When I left this August, I had completed a total of 34 years of mostly happy

memories.

I still see a lot of the old team in and around Basingstoke. While I'm missing my colleagues at Cromwell Place I am happily looking forward to

my next chapter, initially volunteering as a general/activities assistant at our local care

home and who knows where this will lead me next?

Susie (then Sue Kent) on right on occasion of Fred New’s

retirement in 1989 with (from left to right) Carol Lewar,

Lesley North, Fred, Paul Trotman and Wendy Hogg

Vanessa Couchman

At Macmillan 1982-87 working on the Humanities list in the (initially Macmillan Press then Macmillan Education) Higher & Further

Education Division starting as Editorial Services Controller and ending as Publisher.

When I started I was Vanessa Peerless but,

after divorce, I reverted to my maiden name and kept this when I married my current partner, Per,

in 1994.

After Macmillan I developed a humanities list for Pinter Publishers in London, did an MBA in

1989/90 at Warwick Business School in, and then joined the (now defunct – not my fault!)

Audit Commission where I was latterly head of strategy and communications.

Since 1997, Per and I have lived in an 18th

century farmhouse in SW France, from where I ran my own consultancy and corporate writing

business. I write a blog about French life Life on La Lune and historical novels set in France and Corsica (see my Amazon author page here). I sing in choirs, help to restore historic buildings

and walk a lot. I have no children, but two stepchildren, four step-grandchildren and one

step-great-granddaughter!

Tell your friends about the Macmillan Network New members are welcome and the more of your friends and contemporaries sign up, the more

relevant the network is likely to be to you – and the more likely that we can help put long-lost friends in touch with each other by contacting other members on your behalf. Feel free to forward copies of the

newsletter to former Macmillan and Pan employees who are not listed as members – and please draw their attention to the joining instructions on page 1.

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(*for more details of 100 Not Out click here).

News from Macmillan

Macmillan celebrates 20 years of study skills publishing! By Suzie Burywood

Launched in 1999 with the first edition of The Study Skills Handbook by Stella Cottrell, the Macmillan

Study Skills series, which is now home to over 50 titles, aspires to make the process of learning easier, faster and more enjoyable. Now published in the Red Globe Press imprint (see Issue 7), the original series is today part of a diverse portfolio of resources which allows students to learn in the way that works best for them. The Handbook itself, recently reissued in its 5th edition, is Red Globe’s top-selling title with lifetime sales well over half a million copies.

As Stella says ‘In the world of education, almost everything has changed except the need for good study skills. Twenty years on, we are so much more aware of the difference that effective strategies,

habits and attitudes can make to student outcomes and well-being for all students, at all levels.’

Stella Cottrell in our office with a special clothbound edition of the Handbook presented to her to

celebrate the 20th anniversary.

The list has accordingly evolved (see our timeline here) and today’s titles range well beyond core academic skills with an increasing proportion addressing issues of employability and student wellbeing.

Writing for Science Students by Jennifer Boyle and Scott Ramsay was voted Book of the Year by booksellers at the Academic Book Trade Conference last year where it was commended for adding value to students’ experience of university.

Peter Thew

About our Members

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Memories of Nature by Roger Woodham I had two stints on the editorial staff of Nature, in 1970-77 and 1992-95. I worked in three different locations: Canberra House, Little Essex Street and Crinan Street and in two different technical environments, before and after the advent of the PC. I also worked with two of the (only) six Editors there had been since Nature was founded in 1869 as a weekly journal, which it has continued to be.

Nature was always something of an oddity in the Macmillan stable. Along with Nursing Times, it didn’t seem to fit in to what was regarded chiefly as a book publishing organization. The staff of Nature represented only a very small proportion of the total Macmillan staff, and most of its team members were scientists with previous experience in a research environment – not typical elsewhere in Macmillan.

Facsimile of the first edition of Nature

produced for the 150th anniversary

The early 1970s saw Nature on the third floor of Little Essex Street, one floor above the Iron and Steel Industry Training Board and two above Lord Goodman’s legal offices (both subtenants of Macmillan at this time). Nicky Byam Shaw often referred to the editorial offices as ‘through the green baize door’, emphasizing the image of stratospheric academe. In fact, we were simply a bunch of scientists and experts on magazine production intent on getting something out every week. I had a two-week internship in 1969, which is how I came to work in Canberra House (an overflow from Little Essex Street in nearby Maltravers Street) for that short period, as a result of which I was offered a job to start on completion of my PhD in 1970.

Flicking through a copy of Nature, one was struck by the fact that this was a publication that carried a good deal of advertising – both display and classified, as it was seen as a good place to push international job vacancies as well as cutting-edge scientific equipment and materials. Among the editorial pages, near the front of an issue, were leaders on topics of general scientific relevance (sometimes political), news stories about everything from science funding to drug safety, and analysis of current scientific papers, whether published in Nature itself or not, by staff members or outside experts in a particular field.

Of course, Nature’s main mission was to publish original research in the physical and biological sciences – astronomy, oceanography, solid state physics, molecular biology, botany, immunology, to name but a few areas. Shorter scientific papers were called ‘Letters’, and longer ones ‘Articles’. There would be three or four Articles in an issue, and maybe twenty or so Letters.

Manuscripts from scientists would arrive by the post bag load every day, before going into the process of reading, review, refereeing (‘peer review’), amendment by the authors, and publication. Many fell by the wayside, for various reasons – they might be too specialized, or they might fall at the later refereeing hurdle. Only about 10% or so of those manuscripts submitted would make it into print.

In those days, accepted manuscripts were logged in a hand-written loose-leaf ledger, to be replaced later by a Kalamazoo system, with one hooked strip per manuscript title which could be moved around and appended to a desired ‘page’ which might represent part of a given issue, for example. Also, rather quaintly, graphs and diagrams were redrawn if necessary, by hand, and re-lettered using Letraset (a dry-transfer system involving the transfer of type a letter at a time from a sheet). Later a mechanical device was used that printed on to labels, letter by letter.

In the 1970s every part of this weekly magazine was set in hot metal Monotype, or Linotype for parts of the news pages. So all proofing was done on paper galley proofs, and those for Letters and Articles had to be sent out by post to the authors, and were measured in the office for rough page make-up purposes using a piece of knotted string.

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John Maddox (the Editor since 1965) and Mary Sheehan ruled the roost, with John dictating leaders to Mary on her typewriter (electric, just, I seem to remember). Editorial meetings could include allocation of news stories to be written, as well as discussion of the Letters and Articles of current interest. Mary’s role was a mixture of personal assistant to John and office manager. John himself came from a research background originally, which he forsook for a career that included Science Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Controversially in some eyes, John occasionally did away with the previous convention that Articles and Letters would be published strictly in order of acceptance, in order to give priority to a piece of research that he felt was of particular interest and importance. What was it like to work in the Nature office? There was very little space in Little Essex Street (rather more when Nature moved to Crinan Street in 1994), but that made the inevitable discussions that went on much easier. All in all, it was rather like a university department. My background when I arrived in 1970 was as a physicist, and I started out in a mixture of roles, ranging from progressing physical science manuscripts through the system to writing news stories or about research developments generally. I can recall attending meetings of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology: interesting meetings, usually with news story potential. On occasion, one knew what killer question should be asked of the person in the hot seat but frustratingly no MP asked it.

Roger in Basingstoke in 1989 a few years before his second Nature stint.

In the 1990s I returned to Nature after some 13 years in various logistics roles in Basingstoke, and became Managing Editor and Editorial Director, which brought with it recruitment and personnel responsibilities, and a rather unorthodox management relationship with John Maddox, whose boss I technically was. I signed his expenses; he was the knighted and eminent Editor. Enough said.

John’s ability to write to within a line or two of a set length was legendary. On his return from a visit in the early 1970s to South Africa, he was aiming to write a four-page leader for the section devoted to South African science. In those days, the final pages had to be approved for press by a member of Nature’s editorial staff at Flarepath Printers in Radlett, Hertfordshire, and I informed John that the final two pages of his leader would have to go to press a day before

the first two. ‘No problem’, said John, ‘I will write the last two pages first.’ I was there when the first two went to bed and apart from having to shorten a paragraph to fit, the join was seamless.

John’s ambition was to publish three times a week, so Nature Physical Science and Nature New Biology came into existence. I was closely involved with the former. Some years later it was clear that their time had not yet come and they ceased publication. As evidence that they were simply ahead of their time, today the Springer Nature list consists of more than fifty original-research and review journals covering individual fields such as Catalysis, Materials, and Electronics, as well as more routine ones such as Immunology.

David Davies (known as ‘Dai’) took over as Editor in 1973, and in 1974 we were overtaken by the Three-Day Week. This was one of several measures introduced by the government to conserve electricity, the generation of which was severely restricted owing to a miners’ strike. The effect was that from 1 January until 7 March 1974 commercial users of electricity were limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. hospitals, supermarkets and newspaper printing presses) were exempt. In Little Essex Street during that time, news stories from the Washington Office were often received on the Telex machine in candlelight.

David Davies

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Nature printing was not exempt, and the decision was made in December to transfer production wholesale to the William Byrd Press in Richmond, Virginia where US copies had been printed for a while. Mike Barnard, then Production Director of the Journals Company, and I went there in late December to set things up and agree schedules; soon after a colleague went too, carrying in a large suitcase camera-ready artwork for the Letters and Articles destined for the next few issues. Mike Barnard recalls: ‘My main memory of the three-day week adventure is sitting with you on the plane to Washington, looking at the Byrd Press schedule of prices, and failing to work our way through the mass of technical detail. You then had the bright idea of asking them for a pro forma invoice against the last issue printed in the UK. They produced this while we were there, and it indicated that the proposed US deal was considerably cheaper than the UK costs - and off we went. We were helped by an advantageous exchange rate, of course. How things have changed!’

Printing the whole run in Virginia during that period meant non-US copies had to be sent to the UK promptly for onward distribution. On one occasion the PanAm freighter arrived late and Mike had to get the copies offloaded as an absolute priority so that publication on this side of the Atlantic would not be delayed.

By the time of my second spell on Nature, PCs had made an appearance, and were beginning to make an impact. Progressing papers through the refereeing and selection process took place on a system that could be accessed from both the London and Washington offices, though there

were sometimes problems with synchronization of the data entered the previous day at the two ends – a problem which nowadays seems to belong in the dark ages. John Maddox had returned as Editor in the late 1980s, and he had a piece of tailor-made software called Octopus that counted characters, words and lines for his leaders and news pieces. Of course, Word does most of this for us nowadays, but there were only hazy

John Maddox at his desk (from cover of issue of 23 April 2009 beginnings in those days. In which Nature remembered him following his death).

Fionnuala Duggan came on the scene as our New Media guru, and we became familiar with hyperlinks, a real novelty at the time. By the time 1995 came around, David Pullinger had come aboard from the Institute of Physics and the first CD-ROMs of Nature content had seen the light of day, the quaint precursor of modern online availability.

I was responsible for the limited number of associated journals that began publication in the early 1990s. These included Nature Genetics, Nature Structural Biology, and Nature Medicine, all published monthly. In my capacity as Managing Editor, I was part of the decision to recruit Annette Thomas. I left Nature for good in 1995, because Macmillan Distribution had need of me as Commercial Director by which time Sir John Maddox was retiring and being replaced by a new Editor, Philip Campbell. Issue 1 of Nature Genetics

Send in your memories and photos

Do you have memories of your time at Macmillan that might interest our readers? Right now we’d welcome further recollections of working for Nature - especially from other time

periods – as there will be further coverage of the 150th anniversary in the next issue. But memories from other parts of the company (wherever in the world) are also always welcome.

If you have photographs from your time at Macmillan you are willing to share - especially of everyday working life of which there are few in the Archive - please contact Alysoun

(a.sanders@macmillan.co.uk) to arrange to send in scans (or originals which will be scanned and returned). Please also provide her with names of everyone you can identify in them!

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The Four Lives of Alan Bott by John Handford The name Alan Bott is forever associated with Pan Books, of which he was the founding father, but it may be news to some that, before launching the imprint for which he is best known, he had pursued three other successful careers.

Alan Bott in uniform as a Captain in the Royal Flying Corps

While on the run in Turkey in 1918, Bott used this photo, taken while a prisoner in Constantinople and signed with a false name

and rank, to convince a gendarme that he was a German officer in mufti.

Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1893, he joined in 1909 the 9th (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) Battalion, London Regiment, a newly formed Territorial unit, giving his age as 17 and his occupation as warehouseman at Debenham & Co, 97 Wimpole Street. After the outbreak of war he enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery, a branch of the Royal Artillery tasked with improving the accuracy and efficiency of gunnery. He soon transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and by April 1916 he was serving with the newly formed 70 Squadron, known as ‘Umpty’ Squadron, in France. Flying as the observer in a two-seater Sopwith 1½ Strutter biplane, he achieved three kills of enemy aircraft. On one occasion, his plane was hit by enemy fire and forced to land. Having trained as a pilot, he transferred, with the rank of Captain, to 111 Squadron in Sinai, flying French-built Nieuport biplanes in support of Allenby’s Expeditionary Force. He made two further kills over Palestine and was awarded the Military Cross. His five kills qualified him to be called an ‘air ace’. However, on 22 April 1918 he was shot down in flames in the desert and taken prisoner by the Turks. His escape four months later after several failed attempts earned him a bar to his MC, and sowed the seed for his second career as an author and journalist. Bott made his début as a writer in 1917 with An Airman’s Outings with the RFC, (or in the US edition Cavalry of the Clouds), published under the pseudonym ‘Contact’, the word a pilot shouted as his mechanic swung the propeller to start his engine. One of the earliest first-hand accounts of air warfare, it is still available both in print and online. Writing in France before he left for the Middle East, he predicted: ‘I am convinced that war flying will be organised as a means to victory’, a forecast that has since been amply fulfilled, though many would have doubted it at the time. As the war was still raging at the time of publication, any information that might help the enemy, such as types of Allied planes, was censored. A sequel recounting more exploits of aerial combat was clearly the intention, but fate intervened, so the flights in the title of his next book, Eastern Nights – and Flights (1920) were on the ground and from his captors.

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His repeated attempts to escape led to his removal further from the front line, first to Damascus, then to Aleppo, and finally to Constantinople. He eluded his captors only a few weeks before the Turkish surrender in October 1918. The return of peace saw Bott working as a journalist, contributing to weeklies and writing theatre reviews. In 1926, he was appointed editor of The Graphic, an illustrated weekly magazine, where he remained for six years and where his byline appeared frequently. It was through journalistic contacts that he met Josephine Blumenfeld whom he married in 1930. They had three children, Simon, Annabel and Susannah (see Nicholas Byam Shaw’s article in this issue). He wrote one further published book, Our Fathers (1931), an illustrated survey of the manners and customs of his father’s generation and was an editor or contributor on three others. Bott’s first venture into book publishing was the Book Society which he founded in 1929 and which ran for forty years. A panel of eminent judges from the world of letters selected a ‘Book Society Choice’ each month, usually a novel, from proofs supplied by hopeful publishers. Members, of whom there were as many as ten thousand at its height, received a copy of the publisher’s first edition at the full published price – a huge boost for authors and publishers. Further, selection for the Society often led to sustained sales and bestsellerdom, while the Society benefited from generous discounts from publishers. Among Macmillan authors chosen were Charles Morgan and Mazo de la Roche; Hugh Walpole chaired the panel of judges. His next initiative was to seek a much bigger market for cheaper, but still recently published, books through the Reprint Society (also known as World Books), of which Harold Macmillan was one of the founding directors. It was launched in 1939 with T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom in two volumes at 3/6 (17½p) each. The monthly books that followed were hardback, economically produced but with good design and typography, and uniform. Hopes that sales would be sufficient to justify the low price were fulfilled, with, at its peak, 200,000 members paying 2/6 (12½p) a book, making it the nation’s biggest book club. It was especially popular during the war, and survived long after its founder’s death. Bott was also associated with The Folio Society from its foundation by Charles Ede in 1947, though he took no active part in its management. And then there was Pan. The company was registered in 1944 but it took a long time to overcome wartime red tape and print the first paperbacks. Meanwhile, the imprint was launched with six hardbacks, now much sought after by collectors.

The earliest Pan books sported

a full-length piper. It was soon replaced by the familiar half-

length silhouette which lasted

until the Macmillan group logo took over.

The frontispiece and title page for one of the six hardbacks

which launched the Pan imprint.

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By 1947, restrictions on paper supply were overcome by using continental printers, mainly in the Paris area. The colourful covers, in contrast to the sober typographic designs of the principal competitor Penguin, combined with smart marketing and low cover prices, quickly secured Pan’s position in the marketplace. Sadly, Alan Bott did not live to see the first million seller, The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill. Published in 1954, its sales passed the million mark in 1956. But by the time he died, aged 59 after a short illness, in 1952, over two hundred paperbacks had been published. His Times obituary called him ‘a shrewd and capable man of affairs’. I am indebted for some of the facts about Alan Bott’s life and work to Tikit.net, the website for Pan collectors which includes a chronology of his life and the full Times obituary. Thanks also to its creator Tim Kitchen for the copies of

the wartime pictures which appeared as the frontispieces of the US editions of the two books mentioned.

An Airman’s Outings with the RFC can be found online here and Eastern Nights – and Flights here. The latter was later reissued in paperback by Penguin in 1940 as just Eastern Nights.

Three of the first twelve Pan paperbacks were Macmillan books. Dominating the cover of the Kipling stories is Lalun, the courtesan in ‘On the City Wall’ after whom the book ship of 1947 was named. In Eastern Flights, Bott

recalled how, while imprisoned by the Turks in central Anatolia, one of his few comforts came from the books

donated by ‘various societies and individual sympathisers in England…many a time have I thanked the gods for Kipling; but never more heartily than…in the company of Kim the lovable, Lalun the lovely, and The Man Who Would Be King’.

Write for Macmillan Together

Ideas for articles for future issues are always welcome - as are any news items and correspondence. We remain particularly keen to include more material from outside the UK

and from the 'grass roots'; while many articles received so far have come from former managers and directors, the intention is to provide a forum for everyone who worked in the

company. Please email with subject line ‘Macmillan Together’ to a.sanders@macmillan.co.uk.

Unless otherwise indicated copyright in all articles in Macmillan Together remains with the original authors (or their employers if written by current employees in the course of

employment). We assume that by submitting articles authors are giving permission for publication in Macmillan Together and unless they indicate otherwise are giving further

permission for use by the archive and internally within the company.

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The Botts and the Byam Shaws by Nicholas Byam Shaw

For the first five years of my pre-war life the Botts lived at Gordon House, on Ham Common, very grand and later bought back by Alan’s nephew Ralph Vernon Hunt. We lived on the other side of Ham Common, at Hollybush Comer near Richmond Park, much less grand and in any case rented. But we became, as families, best friends and I acquired an early childhood nickname from Alan’s wife Jo. After the war started, but before their three kids were sent (briefly) for safety to the United States, my sister and I went to an evacuated school called Stanway in Gloucestershire where Bott#2 (Annabel) recruited me, aged seven, into her chalk-pit fighting gang, my sister being recruited by a rival gang. Late in 1941, my father, a destroyer captain in the Royal Navy, having already survived two torpedoed ships, and taken a leading part in the despatch of three U-boats, was killed when his ship was cut in two (only a tiny fraction of the crew survived) during probably the most famous Atlantic convoy battle of them all. Alan Bott wrote his obituary.

I was then sent to prep school, St. Andrews in Berkshire because Bott# 1 'Simon' was there. Simon later joined Pan and was extremely kind to me over the years until he retired. Pan was started in 1944 by the brilliant Alan with the first title published in 1945, Alan having bought the Laloun (see the story in Newsletter 3 for more detail) to ferry books from France (recently occupied but with plenty of paper), to England (undefeated but short of paper). Alan ran Pan until his death and had recruited his nephew Ralph Vernon Hunt, who had distinguished himself in the RAF, to become sales manager/director. By the time I left the Navy, (in 1956 and reluctantly) there was no opening for a job at Pan, but I came to know Ralph, who had by then succeeded Alan, very well while I was selling Fontanas.

The Botts and the Laloun: Alan is centre stage seated on the for'ard bench. Jo - slightly cut off in the developing - is

near the starboard entrance to the cabin wearing a Naval cap.

The ownership of Pan had varied but always included Collins and Macmillan and by 1986 had been joined by Heinemann - a third share each. Ralph by then was very (and terminally) ill, and retired; Editorial Director Sonny Mehta, who had been responsible for launching Picador, left for Knopf, with Managing Director, Simon Master leaving soon after for Random House. The story of how Macmillan, always supported by Harold but the weakest in trade publishing of the three owners, ended up owning Pan entirely in 1987 is a separate tale; but I had to act as MD for the best part of an exhausting year and thereafter as Chairman. What happened to them all? Jo Bott remained my (by now American) mother's best friend in London with whom she stayed on each yearly visit until Jo died in the early 1990s. Jo was born Josephine Blumenfeld, the daughter of Daily Express editor R D Blumenfeld, and wrote pretty good novels under that name. We all loved her. When Ralph died, Liz, his lovely wife and mother of their five children, asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral (at St Luke's and Christ Church in Sydney Street, Chelsea) which was a big event in the publishing world - and which made me proud.

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Macmillan US Moves to New Quarters

by Michael Flamini After sixty years in New York City’s historic Flatiron Building, it was time for the trade divisions of Macmillan US to leave its iconic triangle-shaped home and move to more spacious and up-to-date digs about four miles south. Ahead of the move, Sally Richardson, Chairman Emeritus – St. Martin’s Publishing Group, and Tom Dunne, Publisher – Thomas Dunne Books, hosted a New York publishing party, to which all former employees of St. Martin’s Press, the company that established the Macmillan beach-head in the Flatiron in 1959, over the ages, were invited. More than a few tears were shed at that party and in those final days, but – truth be told – there were many employees who were looking forward to the change. The move took place over the course of six weeks, with the ‘Pioneers’ group (Technology, Digital Distribution, Workflow & Facilities) moving in on May 20 and the last group (Sales) moving on June 24. Now, all of Macmillan US Trade (including Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is officially housed in one home in a new neighborhood -- The Equitable Life Building at 120 Broadway around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall (where George Washington took the oath of office) and across the street from Trinity Church. The 9/11 Memorial and Christ Church Chapel are nearby. Designed by Ernest R. Graham and completed in 1915, The Equitable Building is an architectural landmark. When it was completed, it was the largest office building in the world by floor area. On a piece of Manhattan slightly less than 1 acre (4,046 square meters), the building had 1.2 million square feet (111,483 square meters) of floor space, and was built to be the headquarters of the Equitable Life Insurance Company. A stunning H-shaped two-tower building with thirty five foot coffered ornamental plaster ceilings in its lobby, The Equitable Building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and a New York City landmark in 1996. It was restored in 1983–90 by Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Whitelaw and has just seen another restoration shortly before Macmillan moved in. Though originally a thirty-six story building, The Equitable Building now stand forty stories tall. The Macmillan offices, which occupy floors twenty-two to twenty-six, were designed by TPG Architecture, feature an open floor plan ringed by glass-walled offices, up-to-the minute technology in sleek conference rooms, views of some of Manhattan’s most iconic buildings and the waterways that surround them, modern kitchens on every floor and a café on twenty-five that can accommodate book parties, company milestones, etc.

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The feature that most intrigues visitors is ‘the secret conference room’ on twenty-five. Just as in any good thriller, behind a set of bookshelves sits a small, private conference room that can be used as a green room where celebrities, heads of state and other honored guests can prepare themselves to give a speech, receive an award or just mingle with the staff. The Equitable Building itself features gym classes ranging from boot camp to yoga that can be scheduled using an app for the building. And, finally, topping the building is a 40th floor dining area and outside space that all occupants of 120 Broadway can use. It also makes a marvelous event space that Macmillan certainly took advantage of when Minotaur Books threw a publication party for Louise Penny and her new book A Better Man during which Andrew Martin, SVP, Executive Publishing Director - St. Martin's Publishing Group and Publisher - Minotaur Books, told Penny that her book had made it to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. As you can see, the Macmillan party has moved south on the island of Manhattan with its exuberance intact. It’s been a long road for Macmillan US from its first tiny offices at 103 Park Avenue to the Flatiron Building and now to 120 Broadway in the Financial District where we look

out on the Hudson River to the west, the East river opposite and the place where both rivers flow into the bay around the Statue of Liberty and beyond.

Michael Flamini is an Executive Editor at St. Martin’s Press. He began his Macmillan career twenty-five years ago as the Editorial Director of

the SMP Scholarly and Reference division which was later rebranded as Palgrave Macmillan. He worked in the Flatiron Building for twenty-three

years before the company moved to its new headquarters. Click on the highlighted words in paragraph 3 for links to Wikipedia entries. For

coverage of the move including a nice selection of Flatiron pictures in the New York Times click here and in Publishers Weekly click here

Write for Macmillan Together

Ideas for articles for future issues are always welcome - as are any news items and correspondence. We remain particularly keen to include more material from outside the UK

and from the 'grass roots'; while many articles received so far have come from former managers and directors, the intention is to provide a forum for everyone who worked in the

company. Please email with subject line ‘Macmillan Together’ to a.sanders@macmillan.co.uk.

Unless otherwise indicated copyright in all articles in Macmillan Together remains with the original authors (or their employers if written by current employees in the course of

employment). We assume that by submitting articles authors are giving permission for publication in Macmillan Together and unless they indicate otherwise are giving further

permission for use by the archive and internally within the company.

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What’s New at Springer Nature? Gabrielle Williams Hamer Springer Nature Limited, as the joint venture set up by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners is now known, is now in its fourth successful year. It has a new Chief Executive Officer, Frank Vrancken Peeters, who took over from Daniel Ropers at the start of September 2019. Frank joined us as Chief Commercial Officer 2 years ago from Wolters Kluwer. He has worked in media and publishing for more than 25 years, including at Elsevier, where he was initially recruited by Derk Haank (our CEO at the time of the merger). Stefan von Holtzbrinck chairs the supervisory board of Springer Nature in Germany. Frank Vrancken Peeters, Ulrich Vest, Martin Mos, Steven Inchcoombe and Rachel Jacobs sit on the executive management board. Frank Vrancken Peeters

Before the summer, the Management Board announced a new medium-term plan for the business, based on a strategic vision ‘to become the trusted knowledge accelerator, advancing learning and discovery for the benefit of all’ by ‘understanding the needs of our communities and making change happen, better than anyone else’.

Journals

Journals represent the largest part of our business in revenue terms and here the key in making ourselves the trusted and preferred publisher for quality journals is to make it easier and faster for researchers to publish and access new discoveries especially in relation to the transition to Open Access (OA) publishing. Already, we are the OA market leader, publishing nearly 30% of our Journals content open access (i.e. free of charge at the point of use).

Back in May, we launched a landmark new initiative called ‘Transformative Publishing’ to provide ‘a faster path to an open future’. It comes partly in response to a growing movement within the research community that all research should be freely available. However, not all authors want to publish OA, and not all funders are willing to fund it! Transformative Publishing is based on two major pillars: (i) ‘read and publish’ deals, which are increasingly popular, whereby we encourage institutions, consortia and funding bodies to take up OA, and (ii) promoting ‘transformative journals’ which encourage authors to adopt OA.

We have just announced the largest transformative open access agreement in the world: Project DEAL will enable millions of German researchers to access almost all of Springer Nature’s articles - that’s over 2,500 Springer Nature journals. This means a huge increase in OA as a quarter of 700 institutions involved didn’t have digital access before. This deal will be truly transformative for open access in Germany, the fourth largest producer of research in the world, where OA publishing in Springer Nature journals may go from 30% to close to 100%: great news for scientific discovery.

Education, Books and Services

In other areas of our business, we are looking to outperform the market in book publishing by providing more high quality books and services for our customers, and to develop further into the fast-growing Research services market. For Education, our strategy is to be THE trusted partner of the education community, delivering publishing solutions that inspire learners to achieve their full potential. Education remains a truly global business, demonstrated by our continuing growth in markets such as China.

Our Professional business is also continuing to develop strong positions in niche markets: this includes establishing a business to offer driver training in Saudi Arabia, where women have recently been allowed to drive.

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How is Springer Nature doing financially?

In 2018, our global revenue was 1,655m Euros of which 72% came from research, 15% education and 13% professional. In 2018 we published 300,000 articles in nearly 3000 journals, working with around one million authors. We published 13,000 new books – that’s 50 books a day! Our platforms were visited over 1 billion times – 2 million times a day! The business continues to grow in 2019 ‘above the market’: in other words, we are growing faster than our competitors.

Our global brands include Springer, Nature Research, BMC, Scientific American, Apress, Palgrave Macmillan, J B Metzler, Adis and Macmillan Education. Following our Springer 175 anniversary in 2017 and Macmillan 175 anniversary in 2018, this year we celebrate Nature 150 for which we have reissued a facsimile of the first issue of Nature from November 1869. What’s it like to work at Springer Nature these days?

We have 13,000 colleagues operating in more than 50 countries (nearly 6000 in Asia-Pacific) and distributing content in 180 markets. We employ 1800 people in the UK.

Last year, we held our first global pulse survey as Springer Nature. As a result, we have been working hard on new initiatives to improve working conditions, such as a global ‘working from home’ policy where colleagues can work 1 or 2 days a week out of the office. I know from younger women I mentor and work with that this has been much appreciated. Promoting ‘diversity and inclusion’ is a major priority for our business to ensure that every member of staff feels able to contribute to their full potential. In the last year we have launched 3 employee groups: SN Women, SN Pride and SN Disabled Employees. We are soon to launch SN Parents. Engaging our colleagues is very important to us. We remain and will always be a people business.

The Macmillan Pension Plan

Apart from looking after over 200 companies worldwide with oversight for their governance and legal compliance, which I have now done for some 7 years, a large part of my remit is to act as Secretary of the Trustee of The Macmillan Pension Plan (we simplified the name last year from The Pension and Life Assurance Plan of Macmillan Limited). XPS Group (previously Punter Southall) are the Administrators. Sue Bale retired after 20 years as a Trustee and as the Chair of the Trustee Board in February and Hanson Farries took over the chair. Anne Young has been a Trustee for many years as well. The Plan concluded its triennial actuarial valuation earlier this year and since 2012 the deficit has been reduced from nearly £80m to below £20m. The Company’s covenant continues to strengthen. Gabrielle Williams Hamer is Group Company Secretary of Springer Nature Limited. This article is an edited version of

her presentation at an Over21 club lunch hosted by Springer Nature in September 2019.

Tell your friends about the Macmillan Network New members are welcome and the more of your friends and contemporaries sign up, the more relevant the network is likely to be to you – and the more likely that we can help put

long-lost friends in touch with each other by contacting other members on your behalf. Feel free to forward copies of the newsletter to former Macmillan and Pan employees who are not

listed as members – and please draw their attention to the joining instructions on page 1.

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List of current members (new joiners since the last issue are shown in red) NB: we may at some point only list new joiners in future issues so if you want a complete list, please keep this!

Edward Addo

Linda Albin

John Aldridge

Doreen Alig

Ruth Allan

Fiona Anderson

Frances Arnold

Julian Ashby

Stephanie Audry

Jill Baker

Sue Bale

Richard Balkwill

Geoff Barlow

Mike Barnard

Jill Basing

Diane Bath

Alan Bathe

Chris Beadle

Stephen Benaim

Audrey Bendon

Maureen Bevis

Charles Bewlay

Liz Billingham (Hughes)

Colin Bond

Michael Bourne

Henry Gordon Bowdell

Margaret Boyden

Jim Breach

Nicholas Brealey

Julie Brett

Patrick Bruce-Gardyne

Helen Bugler

David Bull

Nicky Bunker

Gay Burns

Suzie Burywood

Janet Butterworth

Nicholas Byam Shaw

Jane Canning (Garnett)

Joan Carpenter

Christine Clarke

Claire Connor

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Chris Curtis

Janet Curtis

Shirley Cuthbertson

Margaret Darlington (Calvert)

John Darvill

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Imogen Dawson

Peter Debus

Ken Derrick

Jo Digby

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Rory Downes

Carol Eden

Guy Edwards

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Hanson Farries

Tony Feldman

Jo Ferrone (Rawlings)

Michael Flamini

Anna Fleming (Sandeman)

Catherine Fleming

Ian Florance

David Fothergill

Polly Fothergill

Jean Fowles

Tim Fox

Julie French

Tim Friers

Laura Garwin

Ursula Gavin

Henry Gee

Rob Gibson

Michael Gill

Stewart Gill

Charles Gleed

Helen Gooden

Alastair Gordon

Valerie Gossage

Jacqui Graham

Tina Graham

Vanessa Graham

Philippa Grand

Catherine Gray

Hilary Hale

Lucy Hale

Graham Hall

Mark Hamer

John Handford

Sue Hannay

John Hare

Barbara Harford

Marianne Harper

Chris Harrison

Richard Hartgill

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Neil Henderson

Clare Hodder

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Alison Hubert

Sue Hunt

Pam Hyde (Searle)

Laura Ingle

John Jackman

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Ian Jacobs

David Joel

Rupert Jones-Parry

Gizella Kemeter

Steven Kennedy

Garrett P Kiely

Chris Kinloch

Dominic Knight

Jill Lake

John Lee

Ruth Lefevre

Kim Leggett

Paul Lewis

Tracy Lewis

Tim Lincoln

Simon Littlewood

Sara Lloyd

David Macmillan

Sarah Mahaffy

Laurie Marment

Suzie Matchette

Rosie Mathias

Andrew May-Miller

Hazel Maynard

Philippa McEwan

Peter McKay

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Helen Melia

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Isobel Munday

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Richard (Dick) Murray

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Richard Nathan

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Martin Powter

Marilyn Rashbrook

Steve Redwood

David Robertson

Dot Robertson

Elaine Robinson

Steve Rutt

Alysoun Sanders

Howard Scott

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Kim Selvon

Mary Sheehan

Rob Shreeve

Steve Shrubshole

Kalpana Shukla

Brenda Silver

Andrea Sleap

David Smith

Elizabeth Liddiard Smith

George Smith

Adrian Soar

Anne Stanhope

Penny Stewart-Moore (James)

Brenda Stones

Andy Sutherland

Andy Syson

Csaba Szentistvany

Yoshi Tadokoro

Beverley Tarquini

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Ray Theobald

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Jim Turner

Deborah Tyler

Malgorzata van de Westelaken

Dave Vockins

Michael Wace

Chris West

Karen White

Norman White

Jane Wightwick

Mr R G & Ann Williams

Gabrielle Williams-Hamer

Cecily Wilson

John Winckler

Margaret Winckler

Simon Winder

Roger Woodham

Ted Woodruffe-Peacock

Hazel Wootton

Mark Wray

Anne Young

Gordon Young