Today my latest book, Follies Fabulous Fanciful and Frivolous Buildings, (not my title) is being published by the National Trust / Anova. Hurrah! It’s been a long time coming.

I’d been keen on follies since I was five, and Barbara Jones’s Follies and Grottoes was my constant childhood companion.

Let’s go back to the 1970s. I was a young blade with a decent expense account, working for a prestigious publisher. I soon realised that authors, far from being the godlike inhabitants of the Elysian heights of my imagination, were usually small, craven, fawning creatures desperately anxious to please any publisher who might deign to notice their work.

I rang up Barbara Jones and took her to lunch in Hampstead. “I’m not offering you a book deal,” I announced. “I’m writing a book on follies myself, and it’s going to be much bigger than yours, and in full colour, too.”

Between a sharp, confident young executive and a frail, worried, little old lady there was no contest. She slumped back with a sigh. “Well done you. May I see what you’ve done?” she quavered. I graciously lent her my dummy and the notes on the scores of follies I’d discovered which were not in her book.

Eighteen months later Barbara Jones’s new, greatly enlarged and radically redesigned Follies and Grottoes was published to wild acclaim, and closed the market to any other folly book for a decade. It bore a striking resemblance to the page layout of the dummy I had lent her, even down to the choice of typeface.

Never mess with a little old lady.

I persevered after this little set-back. In 1978 an art history student was sitting in a dentist’s waiting room in Utrecht, Netherlands and leafing through a back issue of Country Life, as one does. He came across a letter from Gwyn Headley, dated 1972, who was writing a book on follies. As Wim Meulenkamp, the said student, was doing a PhD dissertation on British follies he thought he’d like to see this book, which surely had been published by now as six years had meandered past.

He got in touch. I saw the chance to inject some intellectual rigour into my planned Hello Clouds Hello Sky approach, and signed him up as co-author for my as yet unstarted folly book.

At the time Jonathan Cape was Britain’s leading publisher and the National Trust was the leading heritage organisation. Therefore it was blindingly obvious to me that Jonathan Cape should publish Follies: A National Trust Guide by Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp, so I informed both organisations of this, and they meekly agreed.

At the launch party in Queen Anne’s Gate the new Publishing Manager of the National Trust was weaving down the staircase as I ascended. As we crossed, she hissed “If I’d been in charge when all this started I’d have made sure this was NEVER published!” The book was a huge success, selling out in 11 months.

Fast forward 20 years. Both Wim and I had jointly and severally written more folly books. The National Trust’s Publishing Manager got in touch with me. “Would you like to write a book on follies for us?”

It turns out that the hiss on the staircase meant she wanted the original book only to cover those follies in the custodianship of the National Trust. We had included everything we could find. That was not in her plan for National Trust books.

The new book should only include National Trust follies. That seemed reasonable to me. So I wrote the book, delivered the manuscript, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The Publishing Manager retired. New unhappy lords succeeded. The book? Well, they didn’t like to talk about that. Great, I thought, another orphan book. All my books have been orphan books, in that the commissioning editor always left before the book was published so there was never anybody left inside the publishing house to fight its corner, a critical necessity for the success of any book. Let alone orphan — this one was not likely to be born at all.

Then, last year, heavy-set representatives of the National Trust and Anova, mirror sunglasses flashing, caught me on the fotoLibra stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

“Does yuh remember dat manuscript yuh sent eight years ago?”

“Yes,” I answered cautiously.

“We’s gonna publish it!”

So here it is, at last. I’m not holding my breath for the oceans of publicity that washed over the original Follies: A National Trust Guide book as the publisher won’t return my calls, but it’s a sweet little hardback book, prettily designed, and very cheap at £8.99, a great gift for lovers of Britain, architecture and eccentricity. Alas all the photographs bar four were supplied by the National Trust Picture Library, but then they are the publishers, after all.

Forty years after my boast to Barbara Jones that my book on follies would be in full colour, here it is at last.

It is what is known in the trade as a Slim Volume. But it should make a pleasant little present. It’s a tiny hardback, with lots of pretty pictures so you don’t have to read too much of my text. Available of all good booksellers, is what they say. ISBN 978-1-907892-30-1

One note of naked self-interest — if you are kind enough to buy it, please try and choose a retailer other than Amazon, where deep discounts mean someone has to be cut out of the equation if the publishers and booksellers are to make any money. And yes, you’ve guessed it — that’ll be the author. But I can supply signed copies for £8.99 plus £2.20 postage in the UK if you email me, or let me know in a comment to this post.

 

 

 

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