Starting Arms and Armour Press
There were three periods of growth at A&AP. The first, before having office or team, I have already written about. As A&AP grew it became impractical to run it from the bedroom in my parents’ home, and there was a brief but key transition period in having offices and the first staff, between 1969 and 1971, and which is the subject of this Tail Piece. The next period was from 1974 to 1986, a major period for A&AP, and I will write about this at a later date.
In the summer of 1969 I moved into the first Arms & Armour Press offices, a small, historic building on Finchley Road, in Childs Hill, in North West London. We were in these offices for less than three years, but they were pivotal to the growth of the publishing house.
Another first was the first full-time employee (as against freelance or part-time). Then David Gibbons joined the firm, followed by John Walter and Anthony Simmonds. David Gibbons became a director a few years later, and after I sold Arms & Armour Press he departed to set up his own book production and design unit and our association, together with Tony Evans, who also worked for A&AP, continues.
The first offices for A&AP, in the Finchley Road.
John Walter left after a few years, but undertook the authorship of a number of important books on guns for both Arms & Armour Press and, subsequently, Greenhill Books, and again the association continues. When Anthony Simmonds left it was to enter bookselling, and eventually he set up his own business and is today a leading dealer in naval books and, of course, a Greenhill Books customer. Hence there is a continuing relationship in place, for more than thirty years, with three of the team from the early days of Arms & Armour Press.
In that summer of 1969 man landed on the moon, live on television (prime time in the United States, but early in the morning in Britain), and, drawing an analogy, the publishing programme took a leap forward with the move into the Finchley Road offices. Significant books were now being published, such as German Tanks of World War II by von Senger and Etterlin, British and American Tanks of World War II by Peter Chamberlain and Chris Ellis, British Smooth Bore Artillery by Major General B. P Hughes, Badges of the British Army by Frederick J. Wilkinson, Russian Tanks 1900-1970 by John Milsom and Japanese Arms & Armour by H. Russell Robinson (and some of these and other books produced at that time continue to be in print, regularly reprinted). The formula for publishing was very simple: if an American co-edition publisher would take a sufficient quantity, at a price which would fund the publication of the book, then not only would one proceed with that but one would look for another, follow-up project which could also be sold to that publisher. And one would run like hell to meet the delivery date that had been agreed before any production work had in fact been commenced (or money spent on the book). One lived within the printer’s period of credit.
The authors of most of these books had a museum connection. The translation of German Tanks of World War II from the German was by James Lucas, then with the Imperial War Museum. This was his first ever writing project and led to a long authorship career. British Smooth Bore Artillery was by the remarkable ‘Bil’ Hughes, a gunner, and I visited him at the Royal Artillery Institution in Woolwich. He also wrote the fine Firepower. German Army Uniforms and Insignia was the first of several works on German uniforms of World War II by Brian L. Davis, who acted as a consultant on films such as Where Eagles Dare. H. Russell Robinson was with the Royal Armouries, at the Tower of London, and, later wrote the much valued Armour in Imperial Rome. I would visit with him at the Tower of London, and in those terrorist-free days, and if one had special permission, one could drive past the entrance where visitors paid to go into the Tower, down a few yards to the Embankment between the Tower and the Thames, and along it to the far end of the Tower where there was a bridge and a gateway for permitted visitors to drive in, and park outside the Royal Armouries. It was a privilege to be allowed to do so, and traffic was rare. One day when the embankment area was full of tourists, and I was driving extremely slowly so that those visiting the Tower had time to get out of the way, one tourist started to wave and clap, so I waved back. So as the crowd parted to allow me passage they were all waving and clapping. I could but wave, and wonder who on earth they thought they were seeing. Then, fortunately, I reached the bridge into the Tower itself, and was able to get away from the crowd.
It was at this time that the distinctive logo for A&AP was designed, and the clear and simple initials appeared on a great many books over the years.
With the development of Arms & Armour Press we set to one side the publishing of books on automobiles, although we had published eight titles in a special format under the Lionel Leventhal Limited imprint. If they had been more successful I might now have been writing about a career publishing motoring literature.
There can often be interesting problems when it comes to clearing copyrights, and getting permission to reprint books. When we wanted to reprint a security restricted manual from the end of World War II entitled Red Army Uniforms, 1944, I made the appropriate enquiry for copyright clearance, and the message came back that the work did not exist. I gently pointed out that I was holding a copy, but this couldn’t be accepted because on the one hand the work did not exist and on the other hand as it was security restricted it could not be held by a lay-person. Official permission could not be given until the work had been inspected, and officialdom didn’t have a copy. I was advised to let them have my copy, but I suddenly got queasy in case when I handed it over a handcuff would be clapped onto my wrist, or if it was still restricted I then could not have it back. A handover arrangement was agreed, which would leave me free, and which would enable the book to come back to me. All of this was nearly twenty-five years after the end of the war, and our whole reason for wanting to undertake the reprint was the interest in the historic uniforms worn by the Soviets at the end of World War II. And, yes, we were given permission and I did get the book back.
To clear the copyright on another early publication of Arms & Armour Press I was searching for information about the author, and one of our contacts told us that there was a plaque giving his date of death in a church in a little village on the Isle of Wight. In Britain one has to go from the date of death in order to get the person’s will, to see who he would have willed his literary estate to (there’s no central repository of copyright information, as there is in the United States). But how to obtain the information from the plaque? It was a very small village, and there was no librarian I could telephone, and so I telephoned the local general store. When I asked them to go over the road and check in the churchyard I rather think that they thought I was someone from the television programme Candid Camera. They said that I should telephone back later on in the day, and when they were less busy. They then were in fact very helpful, and provided the information which enabled us to trace the will and enabled a reprinting to be undertaken.
Whilst in the Finchley Road offices I met with a number of authors with whom long relationships were started. One significant author was Ian V Hogg, and I met with him when he was thinking of retiring from the armed services and starting a career as a writer. He was a Master Gunner in the Royal Artillery, and obviously very knowl edgeable indeed. The major question however when he visited was whether, notwith standing his knowledge, he could write and communicate it and present material in a professional fashion and on schedule. We had lots of ideas for new reference books on weapons, but started him with a small, containable project. This was his Military Pistols and Revolvers, his first firearms book which was published in 1970. Yes, the book was indeed ideal, was successful, and was the founding book of his many books on military equipment. To help decorate my new offices he kindly provided a rifle for a display panel. I then received an urgent telephone call a few days later: “hide that rifle, I have to take it away”. I’m not sure what the problem was but within hours he appeared and the rifle disappeared.
Ian Hogg was one of only fourteen Master Gunners in the British Army, there being in fact fewer Master Gunners than Field Marshals. On one of his visits to the office he came in uniform - khaki with Sam Browne belt and peaked cap, and the rank badges on the cuff consisted of the Royal arms surrounded by a laurel wreath with a gun badge beneath. He had come by bus and told me how he had become conscious of an elderly gentleman across the aisle eyeing him up and down. As he stood to leave the bus the gentleman tugged at his sleeve. ‘Excuse me’ he said ‘but are you a Master Gunner?’. ‘Yes I am’ he replied. ‘Goodness me’, he exclaimed, ‘I served 28 years in the Gunners and you are the first one I’ve ever seen, and I do so here on a bus on the Finchley Road!’.
Ian Hogg went on from Military Pistols and Revolvers to enjoy a long and continuing writing career, and has published to date over 150 books on military subjects.
I got to know the garage opposite the office, having an account and filling up there regularly. This stood me in good stead a few years later during the ‘gas crunch’ for I was able to phone the garage, make an appointment, and at the agreed time they would move the barrier and I could drive in for petrol.
I moved from being single, which had enabled me to work from my bedroom in my parents’ home, to marrying my wife, Elizabeth, during this period. With the lead-in times required in publishing, sometimes with quiet periods, my wife’s parents could not understand how when we were engaged in the late 1960s I could meet Elizabeth from the train near her home in the afternoons when she came home from work, and take her out swimming. Especially as at that time I had little enough visible means of support, and in those early days the publications were sixty-four-page A5 booklets. We honeymooned in Teneriffe, with our plane having snow swept off the wings after a record February snowfall, were bumped from our hotel, and ended up staying in the hacienda of the mayor. But that’s another story.
Early in 1971, in something of a thirty year anniversary now, I published my first book on the Napoleonic Wars. This was a reissue of Charles Dalton’s Waterloo Roll Call (carefully reprinting the second edition, for this was a case when a second edition of a book contained revisions and was more valuable than the first edition). This was a first in another respect, being priced in the new decimal currency, following currency conversion from the historic ‘pounds, shillings and pence’.
Sometime in 1970 I was driving up Hampstead High Street and saw an open space where builders had cleared a plot of land. There was just a hole in the ground as foundations were being excavated. I stopped, found the manager of the building works, and through him got in touch with lawyers and the property developer. There was little enough office space at that time in Hampstead, and, indeed, little enough demand for such, so I was able to sign, before the building was above the ground, an advantageous lease. Hence Arms & Armour Press moved from Childs Hill to Hampstead in 1971, expanding into a newly built, large office space.
The story of the ‘glory years’ of A&AP will be the subject of a future Tail Piece.
Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 106 Table of Contents
Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2001 by Greenhill Books
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com