Bookbuyer's
Bookend
It is uncharacteristic of Messrs William Collins to keep so quiet over such a major project as the official history of Rio Tinto Zinc. Regular readers of Bookend were given a clue as to what they were up to way back in June. but the idea of Britain's pioneer of environmental literature putting out an apologia for one of the world's biggest mining empires still retains. you must admit, a coupcon of cloud cuckooland.
What on earth (if you will forgive the phrase) can have got into the company who brought you Joy Adamson, Jane Goodall and Gerald Durrell; whose past bestsellers include Vanishing Africa, The Compleat Naturalist and Wild Flowers of Britain: whose pride and joy is the world-famous New Naturalist series; and who only last month announced the formation of a special natural history unit to cope with several important new projects? How, one wonders, will Sir William Collins be able to keep a straight face when he next bumps into his author Eric Duffey, whose Conservation of Nature was trumpeted abroad with any amount of innuendo in a 1971 advertisement which ran: " For centuries man has exploited nature without thought for the future . . a remarkable volume on a vital and topical subject."
Sir William. who at the age of 73 is still, fortunately, pretty quick on his feet (and even quicker with his repartee). will no doubt have a perfectly plausible answer. And that other Old Harrovian, RTZ's Sir Val Duncan, will probably claim that his company, like Messrs Collins, is consumingly preoccupied with the question of conservation. But to the innocent observerl indeed to the innocent but profitable Collins authors, the whole venture must seem a little incongruous.
The History of RTZ (and of the" tough men (51 wisdom " who built it) was originally scheduled for publication this autumn — though it appears in neither the Collins autumn catalogue nor the Collins autumn trade advertisement. It may perhaps have been postponed — such things, as the publishers of Dorrell's I3easts in My Belfry must appreciate — do sometimes happen.
Should anyone think, however, that the man who runs the most profitable book publishing company in Britain (£3.09 million profits last year) and who controls the many-tentacled Hatchards bookshop, is actually cracking up . . . let Bookbuyer assure them that nothing could be further from the truth. For as Sir William well knows. Rio Tinto Zinc are pretty profitable too (preliminary 1972 results indicated pre-tax profits of On million) and quite able to afford a trifling few thousand copies of their own company history, supplied at a properly negotiated publishers' discouw. And there is nothing a publisher likes more than a nice predetermined sale. As for RTZ. it seems a very small price to pay from their public relations budget for a hallowed position on the most distinguished environmental list in the world. Who, now, would dare to suggest that RTZ — with the Collins imprimata tucked under their opencast milling — ire not passionately concerned with preserving the face of the countryside?
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