Obituary

Geoffrey Robison Chapman

t would not be an exaggeration to say that Geoffrey Chapman, who died recently aged 80, was a major influence on reli- gious book publishing in Britain in the post-war years. He had a lifelong flair for predicting the needs of the religious books markets internationally, and meeting them. Geoff Chapman was brought up as a Catholic in Melbourne. He was educated at Xavier College and studied law while at Newman College in the University of Melbourne. During his student years, the intellectual ferment in Catholic thinking in post-war France, and Joseph Cardijn’s teachings on the social apostolate, captivated him. The hope for a renewed Church never left him. It was his desire to be where the new thinking was happening, and the adventure of travel, that drew him, newly married to Suzanne James, from Australia to Britain in 1954 and to a career in Catholic publishing. He began publishing under the auspices of the Young Christian Workers a collection of Cardijn’s writings and speeches and the Pastoral Letters of Cardinal Suhard. His publishing skills were acquired by spending a couple of months with FIDES Publishers in Chicago, sleeping in a bunk at the Notre Dame University Fire Brigade, South Bend, Indiana. In 1957, with £1,000 capital from Dermot de Trafford, Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, publishers to the social apos- tolate, got off the ground.

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Authors and books were chased in Paris where on his first visit he slept rough under the Pont Neuf. By the time the Second Vatican Council opened in 1962, Jacques Maritain, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Lorenz Jaeger and Abbé Pierre were coming out under the Geoffrey Chapman imprint in English translation. His best-known coup was Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul. He was up in the air in a glider when the significance of a phone call from a journalist friend in Rome hit him. Pope John had left a diary. He hastily landed, caught the next plane to Rome, saw Pope John’s former private secretary, Mgr Loris Capovilla, tracked down the Italian publisher, and signed up for the English-language rights on the spot. Next day, many renowned pub- lishers were after the contract. During the Second Vatican Council, he was frequently found installed in the Colombus Hotel, wining and dining periti, liturgists, bishops and cardinals. Cardinal Augustin Bea took to him and a lifelong friendship with Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban began. In 1969, Geoffrey Chapman Publishers, by now established but needing recapitalisation,

42 | THE TABLET | 22 May 2010

‘He was as at home in complex

negotiations as in a gale at sea’

was sold to Crowell Collier Macmillan. In the early 1970s, he and Sue Chapman took on the colossal task of publishing the post- conciliar Missals, Breviary and Lectionaries for the world outside North America. Working with the Institute of Theology in Bangalore, he solved the complicated prob- lems of paper quality and cost needed to print and publish the Breviary in India at a price people could afford. In the 1980s, the Anglican Communion benefited from the Chapmans’ talents when they published in 12 different lan- guages the prayer book for the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. It was launched in May 1989 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Geoff Chapman never lost his passion for ideas, good theology and books. He was as at home in complex negotiations as in a gale at sea, in standing between angry ANC and Inkatha factions while part of the Ecumenical Peace Monitors’ Team in South Africa in 1994 or in Las Vegas on holiday with one of his sons, placing a bet and winning.

Geoffrey Robison Chapman, Catholic publisher: born 5 April 1930, Melbourne, Australia; died 9 May 2010, Wimbledon, London.

Ian Linden

■Ian Linden is the director of Faiths Act, a project at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Robin Baird-Smith, publishing director of

Continuum, adds: Geoff Chapman was the Lew Grade of religious publishing. He smoked large cigars and he was cool and calculating. He left the more gentlemanly members of the publishing fraternity standing but was nevertheless a gentleman of kindly disposition. Geoff did the deals; his wife, Sue, made sure the books were edited to the highest standards and were published on time. The couple, later assisted by a talented young editor Michael Ayres, produced books that were a real service to the Church. In the early 1970s, Geoff, Sue and Michael

Ayres were talent spotted by Lady Collins (wife of Sir William Collins and a devout Catholic) and were set up with a new imprint called Collins Liturgical. Under this imprint the lucrative Roman Missal was eventually published. If anyone could disprove the New Testament injunction that one cannot serve God and Mammon, it was Geoff. Not only was he a brilliant businessman, but the Catholic community was hugely enriched by his publications. Those of us who knew him and worked with him are the better for it.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

50 YEARS AGO

More and more judges seem to be sitting without juries, though I have heard judges say how much they dislike carrying the sole responsibility in cases where the facts themselves are in dispute. The Jewish Talmud used to uphold the

view that the more serious the case the more judges there ought to be, and in the Babylonian Talmud it was laid down that cases of libel should be judged by 23 judges, since that might involve capital punishment. To judge a whole tribe, a false prophet or a high priest, there were to be 71 judges – the same number that was thought necessary to declare offensive war, and, in fact, the number of the great Sanhedrin.

On the other hand, for cases of indebted ness a little jury of three laymen was considered sufficient. But it is remark- able that there could be 71, for according to one Rabbi Yohanan the qualifications were not merely statutory appearance, wisdom and age, which were easy, but a knowledge of sorcery, which was rarer, and an understanding of 70 languages so that there should be no need for interpreters.

The Tablet, 21 May 1960

100 YEARS AGO

The Catholics of Whitehaven [in Cumbria] suffered terribly in the recent awful disaster, the death toll reaching 49, including 28 married men, 13 single and eight boys. The first to bring any news of the dis- aster was Henry Ferryman, a Catholic boy, who had not reached the inner workings of the pit. Realising that something was wrong, he ran along to the pit bottom and came across two men lying unconscious. He stayed with them for about 10 minutes trying to rouse them till he felt weak him- self, so he hurried to the shaft, signalled and was hauled up. Assistance was sent to the two men, who were carried to the top in an unconscious state. Though the disaster occurred about 7.45 p.m., it was 10 p.m. before the news reached the town. Fathers Berkeley and MacEvoy were soon at the pit head with the doctors, officials and nurses and remained until 1.30 a.m. Father Murphy was away, but quickly returned from Lancashire when the sad news reached him … The bodies being still entombed miles under the sea intensifies the grief and gloom hanging over the town. [Altogether, 136 men were killed in the pit when a build-up of methane gas ignited, causing an explosion and fire.] The Tablet, 21 May 1910 Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44