Independent, The (London): Art a la carte

"Turning down a best-seller is very painful," said the old publisher. "I know publishers who thought that J K Rowling wasn't very good and sent her stuff back. They don't sleep very well now."

"I know people who still think J K Rowling isn't very good," said the agent. "I heard Howard Jacobson on the radio saying that whenever he saw an adult reading a Harry Potter book, he jostled them."

"Jostle?" said the veteran biographer. "What good's that going to do? All it would do is get Howard Jacobson arrested."

"Well, it's something," said the female novelist. There were five of us, having a late-night drink and grumble about people who weren't present.

"Very occasionally," said the biographer, "you hear about publishers rejecting best-sellers even when they know they're going to be bestsellers."

"I doubt it," said the old publisher. "Give me an example."

"The time when John Murray read through Lord Byron's memoirs and decided they were too scandalous to print, so burnt them. What a loss."

"Maybe," said the old publisher. "Maybe not."

"How could it not be a loss ?" cried the biographer.

"Well," said the publisher, "I'll tell you a little story. A long time ago, when I was just coming into publishing, we had an aged author on our list who I will call Adams. He wasn't very famous, but he had known everybody. He had known Arnold Bennett. He had shared a girlfriend with H G Wells. He had played Russian roulette with Graham Greene, and even borrowed money from Dylan Thomas. He told the most wonderfully frank stories about them all. So we knew that when we got hold of his diary, which everyone knew he was keeping, we would have a runaway bestseller on our hands.

"Well, we tried to get it off him while he was alive, but he wouldn't hear of it. Posthumous or nothing, he said. And then Adams took ill. Very ill. I was sent to his house in the country to send our best wishes and, more importantly, to sign him up for the publication of his diary. The day I got there he was well enough to be pottering around the garden. He had even managed to get a bonfire going.

" `I've changed my mind,' he told me, when I raised the subject of the diary. `I don't want my diary published, ever. It will hurt too many people. And I don't want to be remembered as an embittered fool.'

"I tried to argue with him, but he said it was too late. He had burnt it that morning. That was the bonfire he had been having.

"Well, there seemed to be nothing else to be done or said, so I took my leave of him, but I thought I would go and root around in the bonfire before I left, just to see if any priceless fragments could be rescued. And the odd thing was that although there was lots of half-charred paper still visible, none of it seemed to have any writing on it. All I could see was unused scrap paper, even some wrapping paper. I was still poking around in the fire when I heard a step behind me. It was Adams, hobbling down the path.

" `What are you after?' he said.

" `There never was any diary, was there?' I said. `We all thought you were keeping a diary, but you weren't. And you were too ashamed to admit it. So you pretended to burn it. Didn't you?'

"I thought he was going to collapse for a moment. `Don't tell anyone,' he begged me. `For an old man's sake, keep a secret. Let people believe my diary went with me.' "

The old publisher paused.

"Anyway, based on my experience with old Adams, and speaking as a publisher, I would say the odds were that the reason John Murray burnt Byron's memoirs was that they were boring. That they failed to spill the beans. But at least he could put it about that they felt they had to burn them, because they were too hot to handle."

"Have you ever told that story about Adams before?" said the biographer.

"No," said the old publisher. "But don't worry. It's all written down in my diary."

And he winked.