My LBF Horace Bent
Due to overwhelming—okay, moderate—public demand, the erstwhile custodian of the Organ of the Book Trade returns to guide you around the aisles of the London Book Fair...
Bent’s Notes D
ZIEŃ DOBRY! WELCOME back to London Book Fair, Polski edition. Do you know what the Polish word for wilderness is? Puszcza.
Well that’s what I’m led to believe (thanks Google Translate) and, to this Anglophone ear, it seems worryingly close to an anatomical naught-word beloved by the leader of the free world. Anyway, I was mindful of that word as I was
trying to find the Poland Market Focus stand yesterday, which I eventually located in the farthest reaches of the fair—probably closer to Shepherd’s Bush station than the Olympia Grand Hall. Still, the Poles were having a grand time of it and the forest theme of the stand (complete with actual conifers) makes it the slickest-look- ing Market Focus in many a year. Although this reporter confesses to being somewhat befuddled (not seeing the forest or the trees, frankly) aſter Books from Poland’s generous (dear God, all too generous) Vodka Hour yesterday.
There was rather a peppy atmosphere in general across the aisles of the fair yesterday. I’ll confess to being somewhat titillated as I glanced at the semi- nar programme, only to see that the launch of the Spotlight on India events stream would feature Richard Charkin1
, Jacks Thomas and “the ballad of
the Kama Sutra”. Hey, now! Have the Bloomsbury exec and LBF chief been working up a saucy pas de deux? A kind of Fiſty Shades of Ed Balls and Katya Jones2
Then there was Ruby Wax, one of those rare crea- tures: an American comedian who is more famous and beloved in Blight than in the Land of the Free. (Sort of like Donald Trump. Brits love The Donald. Can’t get enough of him! Just ask bestselling author Susan Hill.) Aſter opening the LBF version of her laudable Marks & Spencer Frazzled Cafes3 venture—a slew of drop-in coffee shops prescribed as safe spaces to discuss mental health issues, which will be rolled out in M&S stores nation- wide—Wax stormed the Rights Centre to stron- garm foreign publishers to ink translation deals for her book, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled. Some of the folk there didn’t quite get the joke; “tpical American”, one Scandi publisher was heard mutering. Not all were so peppy, though. A rather worse- for-wear Will Atkinson4
was slumped over the
Atlantic stand, still feeling the effects of the previ- ous night’s raucous author part, at which he was hobnobbing with the likes of writer William Hartston4
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, posing for photographs with a still- sober sparkle in the eye that won’t return until next week. The shy and retiring Atkinson had to give a speech, but looking back, he was not dissatisfied with the results. “One of my authors said that the best thing about it was that it was the just right length,” he beamed. A compliment that is music to the ears of any man. ×
off “Strictly” (to our Market Focus readers,
that’s the UK version of “Taniec z Gwiazdami”)? Alas, no: disappointingly, it was a professional troupe. Maybe next year, Jacks and Charkers?
Management
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3
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