IN BRIEF My London Book Fair
My LBF Clare Alexander
As told to Natasha Onwuemezi
I’m working on a large number of authors and projects, so it’s hard to have any perspective. But every year I find I get renewed clarit and focus at LBF. As much as I dread some 50 meetings in one short week, I get increasingly sentimental about seeing old friends and enjoying the company and brilliance of my young colleagues. I also love those chance encounters. Last year three of us were having meetings simultaneously at one table and by the end we were all talking across each other and making connections that couldn’t have happened otherwise.
Tere are many people I’m looking forward to seeing. I try to have lunch or dinner with some of my oldest friends like Susan Kamil, Maya Mavjee, Andrea Schulz, Bill Thomas and Leonello Brandolini. We share many authors and so much from the past, and are still here talking about new books and authors. But fresh traditions also spring up—[Crown & Hogarth editorial director] Lindsay Sagnete and I had such a good time last year that we now make a point of having lunch together on the first day.
I’ve been every year since the first one, [which] was in a sort of multi-storey car park
I’ve been every year since the first one [in 1971]. The first fair was in a sort of multi-storey car park in the Barbican, with no light and no air. I seem to remember we all got ill. It was vile. It’s got a whole lot bigger and a whole lot beter since then. Also, in the early years British publishers put on a pantomime for visitors. At some point it usually involved Patrick Janson-Smith puting on a frock. One year, I sang “Big Spender” wearing a pink wig. I think the foreign publishers were mostly baffled.
I do have a favourite Italian restaurant—it’s about seven minutes from the fair. I’m not going to name it as a small group of us see each other there every year. In January I pre-book it for lunch for all three days.
Clare Alexander Agent, Aitken Alexander
Te LBF stalwart, who boasts an immaculate attendance record, discusses how the fair has evolved since its inception, the benefits of being close to home and the importance of booking ahead
TheBookseller.com
When Gillon [Aitken, co-founder of Aitken Alexander] was still alive, we frequently held drinks parties for all the publishers of an author with a major book that year. I remember wonderful gatherings for Helen Fielding, Jung Chang and Mark Haddon. Gillon was choosy about the wine he would serve, but only ever supplied rather dry peanuts—quite possibly past their sell-by date—so I used to arrive with bags of good cheeses and biscuits. He was always quite pleased if there were leſtovers.
With LBF, it’s nice to be able to crawl home to one’s own bed at the end of a long day. But more seriously, this is the book fair that most editors come to. In the International Rights Centre you can hear the buzz of people really talking about books.
I don’t even know how publishing will be in 50 years’ time, let alone how the UK will be later this year. We live in uncertain times.
A FAMILIAR SIGHT TO THE FAIR’S
BIG SPENDERS OF YESTERYEAR...
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