Starting a Literary Magazine by Craig Raine

by Craig Raine

Every Friday in the late '70s, I worked as Books Editor on Ian Hamilton's The New Review. The magazine was under constant financial pressure. I once met a bailiff on the stairs who asked me if I were Ian Hamilton. I took him into Ian's office and asked Ian if he, Ian, had seen Ian Hamilton. 'No,' Ian said, 'you just missed him. He was in earlier, but he's gone to Manchester to do "What the Papers Say".' There was a time, too, when all calls from Richard Boston - a creditor - were unanswered and unreturned.

Though The New Review received an Arts Council grant, it was meagre and there was never enough money to pay even the printer's bill. Sometimes, Hamilton could be seen having extended and alcoholic lunches. It is unfair to say he was indulging himself - no one cared less about food than Ian. Eating for him was a matter of ordering an avocado vinaigrette to toy with while he smoked his way through a pack and a half of cigarettes. I once ordered a mixed grill at Bertorelli's which included what Ian described as 'the obligatory, inedible pork chop'. As my plate was taken away, there was genuine surprise in his voice: 'Christ, you've eaten the pork chop.'

Ian was regularly accused by Private Eye of misappropriation of public money. Looking back, I'm inclined to think that he was in fact practising a shrewd form of economy. A good lunch was a relatively cheap way of soliciting material. Or of borrowing money. Or of explaining why payment was currently out of the question. It wasn't only contributors who were paid in a slightly unorthodox way. The staff were paid like this (if we were paid - there was no guarantee). After a morning of arranging reviews and subbing the odd piece, I would take a taxi-load of review copies to a buyers called Gastons at the top of Chancery Lane. They paid half-price on even the most unsaleable books from American academic presses. Literary editors and their assistants were often to be seen wrestling large suitcases in the direction of Gastons. Then I'd go to the New Statesman lunch - a convivial affair started by Martin Amis, who was then literary editor of the Statesman. Afterwards, I would wend back to Gastons, pick up the baton of notes and cab back to Greek Street - there Ian would put the money in his top pocket. This was our wages. I remember Xandra Gowrie, whom Ian called the Countess because she'd been married to Lord Gowrie, taking her cash straight to the betting shop. 'Otherwise, it just ain't enough.' Two hours later, my entire wages had been drunk in the pub next door, where the carpets were so sticky it felt like a remake of "The Fly".

It was scarcely surprising, then, that Ian's hair began to make itself scarce in handfuls. The strain of surviving from issue to issue was enormous. In the end, the magazine folded and the hair returned. Now, I'm on the Magazine Diet - you start a magazine and you lose pounds very quickly. Money is always the problem on new magazines. For a short time, I worked as Books and Arts Editor on the Tatler when Tina Brown was beginning her successful attempt to revive its fortunes. My wages then were a free lunch for two at Langan's Brasserie in Mayfair, where the magazine had an account. Later, I became the co-editor of Quarto, a literary monthly founded by Richard Boston to exploit the market gap left when Times Newspapers were closed down by the management in 1979. Before I took the job, I asked one question, based on my experience at The New Review: 'Do you pay contributors?' Answer: 'Vole [the parent company] is financed by the Dartington Trust, Terry Jones of Monty Python and Richard Mabey, the Liberal MP.' I took the job. The magazine didn't pay its contributors.

It was some time, though, before I found out. A contributor called into the office and I immediately pressed him to write another review. He agreed but mentioned he hadn't been paid for the last. 'No problem,' I said. 'Clerical error.' And I took him into the other office and asked the business manager to write a cheque on the spot. When I had done this perhaps three times, the manager's patience evaporated and he explained: every time you fucking do that [pay a contributor] it comes off our fucking wages. I had a thing or two to learn about magazines. There had been two numbers of Quarto published before I replaced my predecessor, John Ryle, who had accepted a commission from Time-Life to write a book about the Dinka people. I was familiar with the Advertising Manager's telephone spiel - that the TLS sold 35,000 world-wide but, within the UK, Quarto's 20,000 copies outsold their 18,000. And more of the same. A distribution deal was arranged with Comag for the first issue to be edited by me. A couple of weeks