In 1989 John Walsh found himself unaccustomedly lost for words...As the newly minted literary editor of The Sunday Times, one of his first duties was to have lunch at the Savoy Grill with the brilliant academic polymath and reviewer George Steiner...Walsh had mugged up on some topics in readiness...It is this mixture of high and low, sacred and profane, running through Walsh’s account of literary London in the 1980s that makes it such a joy...There is no disguising his excitement as he recalls how, after a decade in the doldrums, the novel burst out in thrilling new shapes and colours...Alongside these comic beats Walsh offers a shrewd analysis of the structural shifts that allowed the literary industry to transform itself from drab and worthy in the 1970s to hip and cool ten years later...The great joy of this book remains the gossip that swirls around la vie haute bohème...The circus was moving on and Walsh, like the literature he loves, was bound for pastures new.
For two weeks in 1971, an air of ‘skittish playfulness’ hung over London’s Bloomsbury district thanks to an event calling itself the Bedford Square Book Bang...It made a deep impression on 17-year-old Londoner John Walsh, and would help steer him into a career in literary journalism...Looking back half a century later, he asserts that it also marked a sea change, luring writers out from behind their desks to mingle with fans...As publishing went from being a gentleman’s occupation fuelled by clubland lunches to an industry noted for whopping advances, Gatsby-esque launches and televised awards ceremonies, it inspired boozy bad behaviour and hot gossip...Walsh himself never could resist a party, and he isn’t coy about relating some saucy shenanigans involving everyone from publishing titan Lord Weidenfeld to Princess Margaret.
Circus of Dreams – no skimping on the grandeur there – recounts a brief period when publishing almost became bold and writers became almost famous...Books suddenly infiltrated the news pages via awards (a bolstered Booker prize) and marketing gimmicks...A major new book chain (Waterstones) appeared in the high street...A whizzy new members’ club (the Groucho) opened in Soho, the improbable brainchild of a bunch of publishers...Occupying a ringside seat at the 'circus' is Walsh, writer, broadcaster and, we must now add, illusionist...picks up the story in his early 20s when, an aspiring littérateur, he begins as dogsbody in a London publishing house Gollancz, just as its star was in decline...He can be very funny and I laughed long at the set-piece lunch with Amis (again) when he over-orders on the vegetables and likens his steaming plate to 'a Crimean war field kitchen'...He’s a good observer when the mood suits him...Alas, his book can’t escape the impression of secondhand stock...While you couldn’t wish the book were longer, it’s quite surprising that Walsh omits to mention one of the stories most illustrative of the book world’s nutty excess in the 1980s...A mainstream publisher was preparing an offer for a renowned historian’s three-volume whopper on the 20th century (or something) when it received by fax a letter from his agent: they wanted £500,000 for the three books. The fax, handwritten, was mulled over at HQ and eventually the publisher agreed to pay £900,000, in instalments...Circus of Dreams?...Send in the clowns.
