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Publishing is tough these days – unless you're in nautical almanacs, apparently Publishing is tough these days – unless you're in nautical almanacs, apparently
(7 months later)
Glasgow, like London, is split by a river. People in the north view the south with a jocular condescension, and imagine a journey there as a minor adventure. During my seven or eight years in Glasgow, I travelled across the Clyde maybe 50 times – to see a football game at Hampden Park or Ibrox, a play at the Citizens' Theatre, or an old film at the Muirend Toledo or the Govan Lyceum. Why else would one go? The south side began unpromisingly with the Gorbals and finished in looping streets of bungalows that stretched up to the Ayrshire moors, a progression that turned on its head Larkin's line about life being first boredom then fear.Glasgow, like London, is split by a river. People in the north view the south with a jocular condescension, and imagine a journey there as a minor adventure. During my seven or eight years in Glasgow, I travelled across the Clyde maybe 50 times – to see a football game at Hampden Park or Ibrox, a play at the Citizens' Theatre, or an old film at the Muirend Toledo or the Govan Lyceum. Why else would one go? The south side began unpromisingly with the Gorbals and finished in looping streets of bungalows that stretched up to the Ayrshire moors, a progression that turned on its head Larkin's line about life being first boredom then fear.
Or that, at least, was the sophisticated northern opinion in the 1960s, when no bridge crossed the Clyde downstream of the city centre and little ferries still travelled to and fro taking workers and seafarers to the docks and shipyards lining either bank. Several more bridges have been thrown across the Clyde since then, and today the river lies as still as an ornamental pond. This week, crossing it in a taxi, I thought how strange it was that, within the span of my own post-school life, ships had sailed with machinery and whisky from here to Mombasa, Karachi, Sydney and Montreal, as well as Belfast and Barra; and how we had accepted these facts too calmly, as if it would always be so, not understanding that 11 miles of working quaysides and slipways would one day be replaced by TV studios, flats, hotels, exhibition halls and Zaha Hadid's flashy new transport museum. Downstream, BAE's warship yard looks like the last remnant of an old marine economy – except that it isn't; Glasgow has another working survivor from its most fabled era, and the taxi was taking me to it through the south side's unfamiliar terrain. It's a landscape made doubly confusing by motorway junctions and stretches of waste ground once occupied by workshops that, like the ships themselves, had been insufficiently acknowledged in their time.Or that, at least, was the sophisticated northern opinion in the 1960s, when no bridge crossed the Clyde downstream of the city centre and little ferries still travelled to and fro taking workers and seafarers to the docks and shipyards lining either bank. Several more bridges have been thrown across the Clyde since then, and today the river lies as still as an ornamental pond. This week, crossing it in a taxi, I thought how strange it was that, within the span of my own post-school life, ships had sailed with machinery and whisky from here to Mombasa, Karachi, Sydney and Montreal, as well as Belfast and Barra; and how we had accepted these facts too calmly, as if it would always be so, not understanding that 11 miles of working quaysides and slipways would one day be replaced by TV studios, flats, hotels, exhibition halls and Zaha Hadid's flashy new transport museum. Downstream, BAE's warship yard looks like the last remnant of an old marine economy – except that it isn't; Glasgow has another working survivor from its most fabled era, and the taxi was taking me to it through the south side's unfamiliar terrain. It's a landscape made doubly confusing by motorway junctions and stretches of waste ground once occupied by workshops that, like the ships themselves, had been insufficiently acknowledged in their time.
Past-tense country. Where were we now? "I think it used to be called Kingston," said the driver. And now? "Kinning Park, possibly." Then the golden dome of a Sikh temple appeared on the horizon, and we pulled up outside a plain, red-brick building that announced itself in painted signboards as the offices of Brown, Son and Ferguson, publishers of the Nautical Almanac, the Nautical Press and the Nautical Magazine. So far as I can tell, Britain has no older publishing company still in the hands of the family who founded it. John Murray, established in 1768 and publisher of Jane Austen, Lord Byron etc, held the record until 2002, when it was taken over by Hodder (which two years later succumbed in turn to Hachette). Brown, Son and Ferguson can't claim such distinction, being only 163 years old and having no author more famous than the ship historian Basil Lubbock, but few companies of any kind survive five generations of family ownership without celebrating their longevity.Past-tense country. Where were we now? "I think it used to be called Kingston," said the driver. And now? "Kinning Park, possibly." Then the golden dome of a Sikh temple appeared on the horizon, and we pulled up outside a plain, red-brick building that announced itself in painted signboards as the offices of Brown, Son and Ferguson, publishers of the Nautical Almanac, the Nautical Press and the Nautical Magazine. So far as I can tell, Britain has no older publishing company still in the hands of the family who founded it. John Murray, established in 1768 and publisher of Jane Austen, Lord Byron etc, held the record until 2002, when it was taken over by Hodder (which two years later succumbed in turn to Hachette). Brown, Son and Ferguson can't claim such distinction, being only 163 years old and having no author more famous than the ship historian Basil Lubbock, but few companies of any kind survive five generations of family ownership without celebrating their longevity.
The Browns refuse to boast about it. Waiting to meet the present managing director, Mr T Nigel Brown, in the foyer, I noticed a framed certificate of merit awarded to the company by the Liverpool International Exhibition of 1886. It hung there as a neglected trophy rather than a quaint decoration to amuse the modern visitor. To judge from Mr Brown's tiny collection of press cuttings, no reporter has visited the office since the Glasgow Evening News's shipping reporter in 1945. In an age when anyone with a desktop and a part-time publicist can get themselves noticed as a "literary" publisher, the considerable achievement of Brown, Son has gone completely unheralded. "Keeping ships safe at sea for 163 years" could be the company's tagline, if it believed in taglines. As it is, the company prints maritime books and stationery, shipping histories, reproductions of tea clippers in full sail, working plans of ships for model-makers, and, as an unlikely sideline, some volumes of Doric poetry and acting editions of the kind of play that appeals (or once did) to Scotland's amateur dramatic societies.The Browns refuse to boast about it. Waiting to meet the present managing director, Mr T Nigel Brown, in the foyer, I noticed a framed certificate of merit awarded to the company by the Liverpool International Exhibition of 1886. It hung there as a neglected trophy rather than a quaint decoration to amuse the modern visitor. To judge from Mr Brown's tiny collection of press cuttings, no reporter has visited the office since the Glasgow Evening News's shipping reporter in 1945. In an age when anyone with a desktop and a part-time publicist can get themselves noticed as a "literary" publisher, the considerable achievement of Brown, Son has gone completely unheralded. "Keeping ships safe at sea for 163 years" could be the company's tagline, if it believed in taglines. As it is, the company prints maritime books and stationery, shipping histories, reproductions of tea clippers in full sail, working plans of ships for model-makers, and, as an unlikely sideline, some volumes of Doric poetry and acting editions of the kind of play that appeals (or once did) to Scotland's amateur dramatic societies.
The same warehouse holds them all and gives an impression that we are living in a previous and perhaps happier age. The logbooks are differentiated by names that surely belong to the early 20th century (Turbine Steamer, Home Trade, Motorship), while the acting editions speak to a society of more rationed pleasure ("No change of scenery is required and the simple setting is suitable for the smallest halls"). As he showed me around, Mr Brown would pull out samples from a shelf to demonstrate the immense variety and age of his stock. "Look, here's something priced a shilling!" There have been family arguments about the need to discard and pulp, but he prefers to hang on to things; keeping them carries only a notional cost, and future fashions in the arts can never be predicted with any certainty. The pitman-poet Joe Corrie, for example, and his play The Darkness: who can completely rule out a revival for "a story of blindness and a disaster in the mine, which has humour as well as tragedy"?The same warehouse holds them all and gives an impression that we are living in a previous and perhaps happier age. The logbooks are differentiated by names that surely belong to the early 20th century (Turbine Steamer, Home Trade, Motorship), while the acting editions speak to a society of more rationed pleasure ("No change of scenery is required and the simple setting is suitable for the smallest halls"). As he showed me around, Mr Brown would pull out samples from a shelf to demonstrate the immense variety and age of his stock. "Look, here's something priced a shilling!" There have been family arguments about the need to discard and pulp, but he prefers to hang on to things; keeping them carries only a notional cost, and future fashions in the arts can never be predicted with any certainty. The pitman-poet Joe Corrie, for example, and his play The Darkness: who can completely rule out a revival for "a story of blindness and a disaster in the mine, which has humour as well as tragedy"?
The impression of a museum dedicated to Britain in 1935 is misleading, however. The technical books sell well, none more so than Brown's Nautical Almanac, which has been published yearly since 1876 and now runs to 1,200 pages of data relating to tides, currents, planetary movement, buoys and beacons, inter-port distances and pilotages – a mass of "Valuable Matter" as the catalogue has it. It is known as the Sailor's Bible, though probably not to sailors, and sells at least 12,000 copies a year at £64 a copy. Altogether, more than 90% of book sales are exports, mainly to chandlers in ports from Rotterdam to Hobart. The Glasgow works now employs only a dozen people, but they keep themselves busy and the workplace seems a happy ship. People never leave. When T Nigel Brown stepped up from warehouseman to production manager, he replaced a man retiring at the age 92.The impression of a museum dedicated to Britain in 1935 is misleading, however. The technical books sell well, none more so than Brown's Nautical Almanac, which has been published yearly since 1876 and now runs to 1,200 pages of data relating to tides, currents, planetary movement, buoys and beacons, inter-port distances and pilotages – a mass of "Valuable Matter" as the catalogue has it. It is known as the Sailor's Bible, though probably not to sailors, and sells at least 12,000 copies a year at £64 a copy. Altogether, more than 90% of book sales are exports, mainly to chandlers in ports from Rotterdam to Hobart. The Glasgow works now employs only a dozen people, but they keep themselves busy and the workplace seems a happy ship. People never leave. When T Nigel Brown stepped up from warehouseman to production manager, he replaced a man retiring at the age 92.
T Nigel is a southsider, as is his brother Leslie, as was great-great grandfather James Brown, who in 1850 opened a bookshop convenient to where sailing ships moored on the south bank. Few in the Brown lineage since have been much interested in the sea, though they work in offices decorated rather half-heartedly with prints of windjammers and the wooden walls of old England. How long they will carry on is difficult to know. T Nigel is preparing his son Richard for a sixth generation of Brown ownership, but rocks lie ahead: the prospect of electronic rather than paper log-keeping (soon to be legitimised in the US Navy) as well as the continuing British antipathy to manufacturing, including the making of books.T Nigel is a southsider, as is his brother Leslie, as was great-great grandfather James Brown, who in 1850 opened a bookshop convenient to where sailing ships moored on the south bank. Few in the Brown lineage since have been much interested in the sea, though they work in offices decorated rather half-heartedly with prints of windjammers and the wooden walls of old England. How long they will carry on is difficult to know. T Nigel is preparing his son Richard for a sixth generation of Brown ownership, but rocks lie ahead: the prospect of electronic rather than paper log-keeping (soon to be legitimised in the US Navy) as well as the continuing British antipathy to manufacturing, including the making of books.
Even now, that Brown, Son and Ferguson survives is a kind of miracle. The factories that made boilers, ropes, chains and marine engines vanished long ago. What's left, principally, is a book of ephemeris that tells a sextant-user how, on any night of the year, Saturn will relate to Mars.Even now, that Brown, Son and Ferguson survives is a kind of miracle. The factories that made boilers, ropes, chains and marine engines vanished long ago. What's left, principally, is a book of ephemeris that tells a sextant-user how, on any night of the year, Saturn will relate to Mars.
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