Simon appleby

Sixty-seven years after Ernest Hecht founded Souvenir Press and eight months after his death at the age of 88, Profile Books is delighted to be taking over all the publishing operations of one of Britain’s most stalwart and distinctive independents. 

When Ernest Hecht died early this year, still at the helm of the company he had founded in the bedroom of his parents’ home in 1951, he left his executors clear instructions about what he wanted to happen to his publishing company.  He had a (short) list of publishers he approved of and a (much longer) one he did not want to get their hands on his life’s work.  He wanted the name to live on and his commitment to independence to be honoured.

Souvenir has a varied backlist of around 500 active titles and is especially strong in psychology, personal development, health and wellness.

Andrew Franklin, Managing Director of Profile Books said: “I knew Ernest Hecht for many years and he was an inspiration to me early in my career.  So, it is an honour that Profile Books was one of the few companies he was willing to entrust his publishing to.  It is a privilege to be taking over Souvenir’s publishing. 

He created a marvellously eclectic list ranging from some of the peaks of European literature, including Nobel laureates, to huge mass-market bestsellers over a range of subjects that constantly surprise.  Ernest himself was particularly proud of the New Horizons series which was one of the very first self-help/health lists in the UK and remains a benchmark for books on specific mental and health problems.

We will be keeping the name and lists going, honouring their quality and individual character.  We will be appointing an editor to run the lists as soon as we can and we want to build on Ernest Hecht’s extraordinary 67 year legacy.” 

The sum paid by Profile is not being disclosed but after Ernest’s wishes are fulfilled, the residue of Ernest’s extensive estate is bequeathed to his own long established charity, The Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation. Established in 2003, The Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation provides financial and practical assistance with the aim of making a difference to people’s lives.

Go on a walk with Iain Sinclair following a chapter in his book Living with Buildings: Walking with Ghosts. Iain takes us from Canada Water through Greenland Dock and then to the Pepys Estate in Deptford once home to film-maker Andrew Kötting. The walk ends in the garden of the London diarist John Evelyn at Sayes Court beside his mulberry tree.

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Annie Gray’s The Greedy Queen, out now in paperback, tells the fascinating stories behind Victorian diets. Dr Annie Gray, presenter of BBC2’s Victorian Bakers, draws together Queen Victoria’s intimate breakfasts with the King of France, to romping at tea-parties with her children, and from state balls to her last sip of milk.  

Buy your copy of The Greedy Queen with 10% off and free UK shipping.

Follow @DrAnnieGray on Twitter

Royal weddings are interesting but the food that is eaten at them is the real draw. This extract from The Greedy Queen tells the stories of Victorian royal wedding spreads.

From chapter 5: Cooks

The cooks were a disparate group of people, from across Europe and occasionally beyond. They had to be ready for anything, from dealing with the appalling conditions of the Buckingham Palace kitchens in the 1840s, to cooking in a none-too-brilliantly converted stable at Osborne House. Every cook had to be prepared to work in any or all of the Queen’s palaces. As with country house staffing conventions, they moved with the family, and only a skeleton staff was left in each palace when it was vacated. However, if they did spend an occasional night without the main staff, they got an extra allowance, board wages, to cover eating expenses. Some cooks would usually be sent on ahead to the next palace to prepare for the descent of the full Household, while others stayed behind to clear up. In later years, when the Household was at the new, private palaces of Osborne and Balmoral, the staff divided entirely, some going with the Queen, and some remaining at Windsor, sending goods out as needed. Edible gifts winged their way across the world, especially at Christmas, while all of the stupendous iced wedding cakes that were produced for the weddings of Victoria’s many children, wherever they were held, were baked and decorated at Windsor. Victoria’s own wedding cake was made at Buckingham Palace by the then confectionery chef, the impressively named John Chichester Mawditt.

Mawditt had been in the service of the Duke of Clarence, and transferred to the royal Establishment with him when he became William IV. He became head of the confectionery in 1835, remaining until 1850, and his name appeared regularly in the newspapers of the time. Confectionery was a true art form, centred on sugar, and regarded as a separate branch of cookery. Mawditt was lauded for his creations: for the christening of the Prince of Wales in 1842 he produced a christening cake which was,

ornamented round the bottom with a neatly-executed border of the rose, thistle and shamrock. On the sides of the cake were placed, alternately, medallion portraits in silver of Her Majesty and Prince Albert, with the arms of England over them, and the Prince of Wales’ feathers with the arms of Wales over them; the whole surmounted by a neat scroll in dead sugar work. Above were three tiers, each environed by smaller scroll work, surmounted by silvered princes’ feathers; and on the summit were pedestals supporting sugar figures of Ceres, Fortune, Plenty, Britannia holding the infant Prince, Clio, the goddess of history, and St David, the titular saint of Wales. In the centre of the group was a representation of the royal font; and several small vases, with flowers, surrounded the figures. The tout ensemble presented an elegant and chaste appearance.

Mawditt also contributed to the dessert course at the dinner which followed, with, ‘several pieces of the most exquisitely prepared confectionery … from the profusion of flowers with which they were decorated it seemed as if a gay parterre had suddenly sprung up among the other gay illusions of the scene’. Ornamental – yet theoretically edible – sculpture was a popular element on the à la Française dessert table. For Albert’s birthday in 1842, Mawditt made two sugarcraft columns, which, ‘more resembled elaborately executed pieces of sculpture in marble, than being fashioned from the frail material of sugar’. They came complete with statues, bas-relief representations of battles and military trophies, ‘tastefully grouped … in appropriate colours’.

Many of the newspapers of the time had a Hello-magazine- like tendency to heap praise on the doings of the royal family. Criticism of Victoria and Albert and, later, their children, for their political choices, was common at various times, but weddings and christenings were rarely attacked. There were telling exceptions, however, and the royal wedding cake was one. Most reports followed a pattern, describing the cake in detail. It was composed of ‘the most exquisite compounds of all the rich things with which the most expensive cakes can be composed, mingled and mixed together into delightful harmony by the most elaborate science of the confectioner’. It weighed 300 lb, with a circumference of 3 yards, and on top were foot-high sugar models of Britannia blessing Victoria and Albert, ‘dressed somewhat incongruously in the costume of ancient Rome’. The happy couple were surrounded by symbols of fidelity, love and a large number of cupids. So far, so good for Mr Mawditt. The Morning Post, however, took a different view, and gave more details. The ‘Queen’s own cake’, intended for the Queen’s wedding breakfast, was indeed made by the confectioners at the palace. But there were also a number of others, made by professional confectioners. The most well known firm of confectioners in Britain was Gunter’s, on Berkeley Square, and they supplied the cake for the state banquet. The Post described it as ‘a piece of elaborate architecture built up so proudly as to out-top all other dishes and be the envy of surrounding ornaments’. Gunter’s also supplied fourteen cakes to be sent out to friends, relatives, foreign ambassadors and the like, across the world. Another well-known confectioners, Waud’s, provided eighteen more. They make Mawditt’s efforts sound somewhat lacking:

‘There is no gilding or “gingerbread” about any of them – no allegorical nonsense, no chubby cherubs, no colours, no muslin, no silver-leaf, no white mortar-work executed by trowel and hod! All is naturally and delicately fanciful … [they have] one serious defect – they are too pretty to be eaten!’

Amid all this hyperbole, the description of Mawditt’s cake is stark:

‘as plain as a sugar-loaf in its exterior, so that nobody need feel any hesitation in demolishing it. Its proportions are, indeed, so cheese-like that all the poetic effect of the allegorical figures on the top, and the elegance of Mr Yates’ artificial flowers around the sides cannot carry off its clumsiness. But no matter. The shape is orthodox. The wreaths and roses are made to be pulled to pieces and carried off as souvenirs, and the cake itself to be cut to pieces and eaten; and so it shall fulfil its destiny.’

Mawditt’s skills must have been up to the job in some respects, or he would presumably not have remained in place as long as he did. However, when scrutiny of the kitchens increased in the late 1840s, he was found to be somewhat lacking, and was dismissed in 1850. (He then seems to have gone freelance or set up shop with his nephew, listed with him as a confectioner in Marylebone in the 1861 census.) The papers were obviously being kind, or perhaps the journalists simply didn’t get close enough to see the flaws.

Dripping with blood and gold, fetishized and tortured, gateway to earthly delights and point of contact with the divine, forcibly divided and powerful even beyond death, there was no territory more contested than the body in the medieval world.

In Medieval Bodies, art historian Jack Hartnell uncovers the complex and fascinating ways in which the people of the Middle Ages thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves. To celebrate publication of this sumptuously illustrated book, we made this beautiful animation. Put the sound on – it has a very rousing theme tune!

Follow Jack Hartnell on Twitter (lots of medieval images for you to feast your eyes on on his feed).

Get your copy of Medieval Bodies with 10% off + free UK p&p.

In paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the – sometimes bizarre – martyrdoms of saints, the sacred dimension of the physical left its mark on their environment. In literature and politics, hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that shaped governance and society in ways that are still visible today. And doctors and natural philosophers were at the centre of a collision between centuries of sophisticated medical knowledge, and an ignorance of physiology as profound as its results were gruesome.

Like a medieval pageant, this striking and unusual history brings together medicine, art, poetry, music, politics, cultural and social history and philosophy to reveal what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.
Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

Vicky Spratt, journalist, documentary maker, deputy editor of The Debrief and award-winning campaigner for tenancy rights, is writing a book for Profile on Britain’s housing crisis. In Tenants: Secrets of Britain’s Housing Shame, Spratt explores how and why the British dream of homeownership has broken down.

After a childhood marked by the threat of losing everything, followed by the stark realisation in her twenties that her dream of traditional homeownership was a fantasy, Vicky Spratt decided to act. In 2016, in her role as Deputy Editor of The Debrief, she started a campaign called Make Renting Fair to highlight the plight of ‘Generation Rent’.

The campaign was a success, resulting in the government’s announcement of a ban on letting agency fees for tenants. But it soon became clear to Vicky that this hard-fought triumph had only scratched the surface of the mammoth housing crisis that Britain faces.

Taking that award-winning campaign as her jumping off point, in Tenants Vicky shines an urgent, startling light on the lives behind the crisis – from the twentysomething told to look “more homeless” in order to qualify for help to the London estate agent preoccupied by the dubious ethics of his trade and the women for whom safe and affordable housing is quite literally a matter of life and death.

Vicky Spratt says:

Housing is the most urgent issue faced by our country. If our homes are unaffordable and unstable how can we expect anything else in our society to work as it should? Our homes are the centres of our lives, from there everything else extends. As a broadcast journalist at the BBC I covered the housing crisis regularly, by fronting The Debrief’s successful Make Renting Fair I was able to do something, albeit small, about the problem. Tenants will go further, telling the untold stories of those at the sharp end of decades of political negligence and, I hope, galvanizing people all over the country to take action.

Vicky Spratt wrote and co-presented Generation Right, a documentary about the politics of young people, for BBC Radio 4 and has written for many publications including VICE, the Evening Standard and the Spectator. Her recent documentary about abortion rights in Ireland and Northern Ireland has been nominated for the Family Planning Association’s Rosemary Goodchild Award for sexual health journalism.

Profile will be publishing this urgent, timely book in autumn 2019. In the meantime, follow Vicky Spratt on Twitter here.

Simran Kaur Sandhu, currently interning at Profile, writes about her experience of being regarded as ‘BAME’ in the publishing industry.

I didn’t read a book where the protagonist was Indian, like me, until I was fourteen – and I read voraciously. Throughout school growing up we had the odd ‘Rashid’ pop up but the only thing that made him different was his name. It felt sort of lazy. Last week, a cousin of mine from America sent me a cheeky Whatsapp with a link to a book HarperCollins published called Someone You Love is Gone by Gurjinder Basran. Other than the fact that this book was apparently beautiful, the main character was called Simran. Outside of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and the Guru Granth Sahib, this hadn’t happened before. It was such a shock that I told the whole family – everyone was talking about it. Then I told my white friends and they simply shrugged: they had no idea how weird this was. Despite the fact that ‘Simran’ is the ‘Jane Smith’ of Punjabi names thanks to Kajol, I never expect to hear my name in an English language book or film. My friends couldn’t understand how much of a shock this was, because they’ve never had to truly search through different media channels to find someone who is like them either in books or films.

When I try to explain to family what the publishing industry is and why it’s so important for ‘BAME’ people to be a part of it, my mother launches into memories of one year old me, demanding to be read stories over and over again, ignoring the part of my career choice that means I am caught up in a constant struggle with my own race and class. Other than a minor blip when I was sucked into fangirl death over Twilight, I read widely respected books growing up. I found that every now and then, a BAME writer would become a bestseller and the industry would pat itself on the back for being so very forward thinking, and then it would revert right back to the way it was until that author wrote another book. Implicit bias by a mainly white, middle class publishing industry means that people like me, my little sisters, my baby cousins, nieces and nephews, still find it hard to find honest representation of ourselves in the books we read.

It can mean that, like me, BAME readers think there is something wrong with being diverse. I tried bleaching my skin so many times, not just because of Eurocentric beauty standards in TV media, but also because every single protagonist I wanted to be like had beautiful ‘porcelain’ skin which made people like her and sympathetic to her cause. I tried out different accents because most of the people in books I was reading growing up didn’t say things like ‘innit’ or ‘peng’ but then was picked on at school because I was trying to be ‘better’ than my classmates. I felt so out of place because I was idolising characters that were simply unlike me. Nikesh Shukla’s The Good Immigrant contains so many brilliant writers who express the same concern and talk about their experiences with BAME representation in media. Darren Chetty’s chapter particularly expresses a concern with the lack of representation in children’s books, stating that children in his classes simply didn’t think they could write about their own experiences, and had to write about that of a white middle class British child instead.

This is why there is such a need for diversity in the publishing industry. This is why I apply for BAME internships and job positions and knowingly let myself become a ‘token’ or ‘fill a quota’: because I need to let myself be defined by my race and my background in order to try to make a difference. In the future, I hope that this won’t be necessary. Something about applying for these schemes makes me feel like if it wasn’t for the fact that I was Indian, I wouldn’t be getting so far. It makes me, and a fair few other people in the industry as well, feel like we will never be good enough on merit alone. A few of my white friends have said that they think the reason I even have this wonderful opportunity at Profile Books is because I can play ‘the brown card’, and not because I put myself forward for every possible event, met as many people as I could, learnt about it and applied because I work hard and am passionate about the industry. It’s a difficult line to tread but it’s being walked by people who are steaming ahead in the industry and making way for people like me to join as well.

Looking at the industry now, things are starting to change. The PA have put quotas in place in the publishing industry to combat implicit bias, PRH have made their staff undergo ‘implicit bias training’ (though how successful some training is in combatting a lifetime of learned white privilege is another matter) and have removed the requirement for a degree from entry-level jobs, combatting class discrimination. There is an honest attempt at championing BAME or LGBTQ+ writers through prizes like the Jhalak Prize or the Fourth Estate and The Guardian BAME Short Story prize. But it’s just not far enough. I still go to launches and find myself being the only BAME person in the room.

A friend of mine is writing a dissertation for her Publishing MA on BAME representation, and in interviews with successful publishers she has found that most white publishers think there is a lot being done, and most BAME publishers think we are nowhere near finished. We must press on. More must be done to champion not just BAME publishers and writers but also LGBTQ+ and publishers/writers with disabilities. Obviously, the way we battle these will probably be different – you can’t always attend an interview and tell if the applicant is LGBTQ+ or disabled, but there is no hiding the colour of your skin. There are different barriers we need to overcome but what we are doing is an important first step and we mustn’t allow ourselves to become complacent. Maybe in ten or twenty years the next generation will be reading more books about Simrans, or Parminders but right now we are not quite there yet. Onwards!

Follow Simran on Twitter @Simmyx1 and Instagram @simksandhu95 

Shaun Bythell lives in Wigtown, Scotland, where he runs The Bookshop – the largest secondhand bookshop in Scotland. It contains over 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving along twisting corridors and roaring fires, set in a beautiful rural town by the edge of the sea. In amongst this are highly unusual staff members, difficult customers and surreal buying trips to crumbling estates and auction houses.  

We can’t wait to publish his hilarious, wry and eccentric diaries in two weeks’ time (28th September). Here’s a little something from him and his staff to keep you going …

Get daily updates from Wigtown Bookshop by joining Shaun on social media @wigtownbookshop:  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube

It’s time we all stopped whining and learned a thing or two from the toughest cyclists ever.

From cycling downhill in freezing temperatures, jolting over loose cobbles and using your winning speech to celebrate women’s cycling instead of your victory, meet the Hardmen and Women of pro cycling.

Eddy Merckx

‘You don’t tell The Prophet what to do; The Prophet tells you what to do.’

Rebecca Twigg

‘She came up against the two-time defending World Champion in the quarter-final, and rather than lay down arms, she went after it, and beat her, and went on to win the World Championship in the Pursuit.’

Sean Kelly

‘Sean was issued a brand new frame after every event, because when he was through with it, he’d beaten it to shreds.’

Lizzie Deignan ft. Marianne Vos

‘Rather than talk about that specific accomplishment, she took the opportunity to talk about how much more exciting the women’s race was than the men’s race.’

Andy Hampsten

‘Anyone who’s ridden a bike knows that going uphill you get quite warm even when it’s cold out, but he noticed that the snow on his head was still freezing and wasn’t thawing out.’

The Hardmen is out now

Visit www.pursuitbooks.co.uk

Follow @pursuitbooks on Twitter and Facebook

In September 2015 Profile and Serpent’s Tail decided to change our policy on unsolicited material. Rather than sending an automatic, form email or letter saying ‘we only accept queries from agents; thank you, but no thank you’, we started reading and evaluating those submissions instead.

We look at everything that comes in though our submissions account ([email protected]) unless it doesn’t meet our submission guidelines. Our response time depends on a number of factors, and right now it’s around 6-8 weeks. 

One factor that can affect how quickly we respond is the number of other submissions received in that month. Below is a breakdown of our month by month submission totals over the last 13 months:

 One year after our change in policy we have received around 870 unsolicited submissions. 85% of all submissions are fiction. The majority of these have been crime/thrillers (which isn’t surprising considering Serpent’s Tail’s history and current list).  Immediately after we changed our policy, crime made up the majority of fiction submissions, but lately, we’ve had in increase in other genres:

– YA/Children: this has seen the biggest jump. It went from a very small number to around 10%. Unfortunately for these authors, we don’t publish YA or Children’s books and these receive automatic rejections.

– Women’s fiction: A fair amount of it verges on Romance without going full bodice-ripping Mills & Boon. We don’t publish Romance either.

– Short stories: We get quite a few of these. Most of them come from one very keen writer who sends around 3 or 4 stories per week. I have not included his submissions in the above count (doing so would push the total well over 900). We don’t publish short stories in isolation and the collections we do publish are usually collected works of already established authors.

– eXPeriMENTal fiction: Stories told from the point of view of a cup of milk, or a suicidal shoe, or told in a non-linear format using alternating fonts and colour schemes. We do publish this type of thing occasionally. But it has to be amazing and your font/colour scheme combinations should avoid inducing migraines in your readers.

– White-person-travels-to-foreign-lands-and-Learns-Something-from-Enlightened-Natives: Do we need to explain why most of these get a hard pass?

Non-fiction submissions have dropped off hugely over the last 6 months. They previously comprised around 30% of all submissions, but now hover around 15%.  We used to get a lot of queries for Economic and Environmental topics, but these have dropped off in favour of the below:

– Examinations of American politics: most of them to do with Trump

– Memoirs: We publish a few memoirs, but very few.

– Music History: We’d actually like more of this.

We’ve also noticed a growing trend for non-fiction writers to look for interest from publishers before they have written the book. We get quite a few emails from people asking if we would be interested in a non-fiction book on ‘X’ that they are planning to write, we send the submission guidelines and never hear back because they’ve gone off to research and write the book. This isn’t necessarily bad, but keep in mind that if it’s a hot topic, we might receive similar, completed manuscripts in the meantime. Best to wait to query until you’ve actually written something.

Follow @AliaMcK on Twitter

We’re very excited to wake up this morning to the news that Spotlight has won the 2016 Oscar for Best Picture! Huge congratulations to all the cast and crew – and, of course, to the Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, who wrote the book tha inspired the film.

“This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican,” said producer Michael Sugar onstage, surrounded by Spotlight‘s cast and creatives. “Pope Francis, it is time to protect the children and restore the faith.”

Betrayal: Crisis in the Catholic Church tells the story of the investigation into widespread child abuse in Boston which inspired the major new film Spotlight (released 29th January 2016), up for 6 Oscars. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, is one of the most significant works of investigative journalism since Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting on Watergate.

Watch the trailer below:

On 31 January 2002, the Boston Globe published a report that sent shockwaves around the world. Their findings, based on a six-month campaign by the ‘Spotlight’ investigative team, showed that hundreds of children in Boston had been abused by Catholic priests, and that this horrific pattern of behaviour had been known – and ignored – by the Catholic Church. Instead of protecting the community it was meant to serve, the Church exploited its powerful influence to protect itself from scandal – and innocent children paid the price.

Read the original letter that helped expose the scandal

This is the story from beginning to end: the predatory men who exploited the vulnerable, the cabal of senior Church officials who covered up their crimes, the ‘hush money’ used to buy the victims’ silence, the survivors who found the strength to tell their story, and the Catholics across the world who were left shocked, angry, and betrayed. This is the story, too, of how they took power back, confronted their Church and called for sweeping change. Betrayal is brilliant, hard-hitting but very readable American investigative journalism at its best.

The film, starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams, is up for 6 Oscars – best film, best director, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best film editing and best original screenplay.