The Night the Books Burned

LOGOS 16.4 crc 12/14/05 1:27 AM Page 206 LOGOS The night the books burned Lionel Leventhal There’s a famous and hauntingly beautiful photograph of St Paul’s Cathedral surrounded by flame and swirling clouds of smoke above which the Cathedral seems to float. It was taken sixty-five years ago by Bert Mason, a Daily Mail photogra- pher. When he died this year, the photograph, symbolizing the permanence of spirituality, accom- panied many of his obituaries. Lionel Leventhal’s first job in the book Although twenty-eight incendiaries landed trade, after leaving school at the age of on the Cathedral, it miraculously survived, but fifteen in the early 1950s, was in a bookshop eight Wren churches were destroyed in the same on the site of the Handel Smithy. In 1956 raid. On that evening of Sunday December 29, he embarked on his publishing career as an 1940, 163 people were killed and 509 seriously editorial assistant to Herbert Jenkins. After injured. Guy’s Hospital had to be evacuated, and two years with Hamlyn, in the 1960s, he eight other hospitals were damaged. Five railway started his own company, Arms & Armour termini and sixteen underground stations were Press, specializing in military topics, which closed. Guildhall was severely damaged. he sold in 1984. He was founder of what is Almost incidental to these terrible events, now the London Book Fair in 1971. In the offices of many of Britain’s leading publishers, on Paternoster Row, which in those days included recent years he has invested in and managed their warehouses, were totally destroyed or seri- several publishing houses, including Charles ously damaged. Among them were: Griffin and Lund Humphries. Today he owns and manages Greenhill Books. He has Samuel Bagster recently published his memoirs, On Bailey Bros & Swinfen Publishing: A Professional Memoir William Blackwood William Collins (Greenhill Books, 2002). Eyre & Spottiswoode Email: [email protected] George Gill Hodder & Stoughton The Hutchinson Group Longmans, Green Sampson Low Marshall, Morgan & Scott Meiklejohn Thomas Nelson Oliphants Pickering & Inglis Sheed & Ward Simpkin Marshall Ward Lock J Whitaker 206 LOGOS 16/4 © LOGOS LOGOS 16.4 crc 12/14/05 1:28 AM Page 207 The night the books burned Also bombed out were the Publishers’ Associ- before Christmas. Now only twelve could be ation, the Associated Booksellers (later called the supplied. They had been at the binder. Booksellers’ Association) and a number of book- At the office of Blackwoods, which had been sellers. at the corner of the Row since 1845, all that was As it was a Sunday, none of the Victorian and rescued was an office safe and two fire-blackened Edwardian buildings of the City were occupied and brass number plates from the main doors. their design was ideal for trapping incendiary Two days before the December 29 raid Ward bombs in places awkward to reach. Roofs were Lock, in Warwick House, had been hit by two exposed and unguarded – for there was only a bombs, its warehouse, being badly damaged. Now limited fire-watching order in force and many its building was completely destroyed. The firm buildings had their doors barred and locked. Fires, was homeless. The staff of William Collins and whipped by the wind, roared like furnaces. Burning Sons, whose warehouse was burnt out, were offered embers swirled into the air and through the streets, the options of leaving for a less vulnerable area or laying a blanket of glowing brands on roofs and moving to Glasgow. They voted to stay in central gables. Two days later, Herbert Morrison, Home London and moved to new premises at Bow Street. Secretary and Minister of Home Security, The tall Whitaker building in Ave Maria announced that fire-watching was to be compul- Lane, from which The Bookseller had been sory for all business premises. published for more than three quarters of a century, In the The Bookseller of January 2, 1941, was gutted. The Bookseller appeared (as Sir Geof- Hubert Wilson wrote: frey Faber, then President of the Publishers’ Asso- “It is the even of the new year – and the hub of ciation wrote in The Author), “without a hair out the English book trade lies in smoking ruins. Such a of place” the following Thursday. scene of destruction I have never seen or imagined! As Stationers’ Hall, the historic home of the I picked my way gingerly across from brick to brick, printed word, badly damaged in a previous raid, hot gouts of sulphurous fumes from buried fires seeped was now hit again. The Publishers’ Association, up between my feet; desultory flames played in the which had been housed in the basement of remains of a rafter here or a floor joist there, and on Stationers’ Hall, had to abandon its office. either side the smoking causeway fell sharply away into In Warwick Square nearby, Hodder & cavernous glowing holes, once basements full of the Stoughton suffered a direct hit and their stock was City’s book world. I looked around me in what was damaged by water. Among the few unscathed were Paternoster Square and recognized nothing but a pillar Oxford University Press and Cassell, whose own box, the top beneath my feet: there was nothing left to roof-spotters dealt with one incendiary bomb in recognize. Here and there half a wall still stood in their Belle Sauvage building, which, however, was dangerous solitude, two or three stories high, giving completely destroyed five months later. form and significance to the desolation, and that was The most staggering blow of all was the all. I was quite alone (for I had found my way in destruction of Simpkin Marshall, the largest through a passage unsuspected by the police) and no distributor in the book trade. They lost some six living thing was to be seen.” million books. Longmans had been in Paternoster Row since 1724. In the early part of the winter of 1940 it * * * * * divided its stock between the Row and a warehouse in Bermondsey. On this one evening, both Sunday December 29, 1940 had been perfect for warehouses, housing over three million books, fire raising. The weather was rainless and clear, were completely destroyed. At 39 Paternoster Row and there was a strong and chill wind. The Thames only Longmans’ safes and strong room remained. was at a low ebb. The 1,500 fires that were started When opened nineteen days later, the papers in could easily spread out of control. the safes were found charred out of recognition, It was planned as a fire raid by the Luftwaffe. but the contents of the strong room were intact. A few minutes after the air raid sirens sounded at Five thousand Longman titles had been available 6 pm, ten pathfinder aircraft of the Kampgruppe 207 LOGOS 16/4 © LOGOS.

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