Abstract
You can tell the truth or get rich, explains a veteran foreign correspondent who achieved the former, but not the latter
What does a professional writer do when he is offered more money to spike a book than he will ever earn from writing it? Is a publisher responsible for disseminating the truth – or only for making money? And is rejection of such an offer a matter of principle, or the basis for a negotiation about amount?
Ten years ago I was offered £40,000 by a foreign ambassador in London to withdraw my book about his country. The book was already in circulation: the ambassador wanted copies withdrawn from shops and pulped before anybody else could read it. This was a big sum, being considerably more than the £6,000 I had received as an advance—and considerably less than I knew this particular Arabian state routinely paid for other services.
My book was a truthful and inevitably grisly account of beheadings, floggings and hand amputations. It detailed – among other things – the death by stoning of adulterous women in the ambassador's country, where I had been correspondent for The Times and Sunday Times, doing daily stories for the former and weekly stories for the latter. I hoped it might add to pressure to get the government of the country to stop these inhumane and savagely barbaric practices and clean up its act – and that it would warn those who had to go there, for whatever reason, to watch out for themselves.
The offer was made to my publisher by a middle-man who sounded him out so that he could sound out me. At that point a famous and eminently respectable British law firm in London took over on behalf of the ambassador. The law firm's role was to confirm the terms and conditions for withdrawing my book and to establish that it was “compensation” that was on offer, not a bribe. One of the terms on which the book would be withdrawn was that it was full of inaccuracies. As a matter of fact, it wasn't.
We'd heard from the law firm before, when it had protested about the content of my book and implied that legal action might follow. These legal threats were indirect, subtle and implied, rather than direct, suggesting that certain things about my book were inaccurate and defamatory, creating an atmosphere of fear about what might happen if we did not agree to withdraw and destroy the book. The lawyers claimed that I had insulted the entire Arab race and defamed the ambassador's country by telling lies about it, but a lawyer friend of mine pointed out that one cannot in law defame a country.
There was a stand-off for a while between the law firm and my publisher. Because I knew there could be no action for defamation, I told my publisher to stand his ground and tell them to prove their case or get lost. Then came the alternative, a financial offer to pull the book. I knew the ambassador. I'd dined with him. He'd been to university in England. He was one of those Arab princes who had become an ambassador through high-ranking royal connections. His government and royal family were doubtless leaning on him to bribe my book out of existence if he could not get it out of sight and mind otherwise. Compensation? Bribe? Whatever we chose to call it, £40,000 was on the table for the death of my book.
But what was British book publishing for – I wondered – if not to tell the truth and shame the devil, if not to publish and be damned, if not to reject bribes and threats? What for, if not to publish the unpopular and politically sensitive and controversial truths? Surely British publishing could not bow to pressure to ban or prevent such books? These were not nuances that the ambassador could be expected know or to care about, coming from a country in which books were regularly banned; a country that was well used to bribing journalists, authors and publishers in neighbouring Arab countries to publish nice and flattering things about it.
The legal harassment and bullying got my publisher visibly and irritably worried. It was increasingly tiresome to me. No doubt this is how authors and publishers in such circumstances get worn down psychologically and emotionally and forced into submission, reaching for the carrot, bending before the stick. But authors, publishers and books should champion the virtues of freedom of thought. I thought it important that we stood on our principles.
I do not believe the lawyers had ever travelled to the country in question, but they showed no reluctance to declare that the book was insulting and inaccurate. My book was in no way inaccurate or insulting to Arabs – I have many Arab friends and contacts in the country in question, and in other Arabian countries besides. Many of them are fed up with being insulted by their governments and royal families. More insulting were these dishonest allegations against me and my book, not to mention this offer of a bribe, couched as compensation.
On the other hand, at least this offer was not terrorism against books by the ambassador and country in question. No physical threats were received by my publisher from any quarter, not least because the book did not mention Allah and it did not castigate or disrespect the Muslim religion. It just described and characterised the ambassador's country in an accurate and truthful way. Where was the insult or the malicious intent? There was none. Yet a respectable British law firm was prepared to suggest that there was or might be, for a fee, and the ambassador in London was prepared to try it on.
Now it may be that the ambassador thought he was being generous with his offer of £40,000. But, having been in his country long enough to know better, I knew that £40,000 was derisory. When my publisher had originally phoned to inform me of the conversation he had had, he pointed out that the first edition of my book – for which I had received my £6,000 advance – would be lucky to make £10 or £12,000, and certainly nothing like the £40,000 on offer. He also added that, under the terms of our contract, half of any financial proceeds from my book (half the £40,000 on his occasion) would be due to him, leaving me with a mere £20,000.
It would be interesting if the offer had been £100,000 or £140,000, as it might very well have been in an Arab world used to such sums. Had I been an Arab author in some other Arab country where the ambassador could not get his hands on me – Egypt or Turkey, for example – this offer would have been more generous purely because I was an Arab.
Was I basing my decision on price rather than morality? It seemed that my publisher was becoming increasing nervous. He probably thought that he was in enough trouble as it was already. The poor man had his hands full publishing books and did not need all the extra legal hassle with which he was being threatened. I also thought I must be in the wrong business, because I knew – still know – people who wouldn't get out of bed for a mere £6,000 – or even for twice that. I was conscious too, that, had I been in the ambassador's country, I would have been thrown into gaol without a penny, and my books would have been burned in a bonfire.
I resolved to resist the temptation of a deal and told my publisher that this so-called compensation was a racial insult because it was a derisory sum that was chicken feed in the country from which the ambassador came. He should be offering several times that if he did not intend to insult me. Only an Englishman would be offered such a feeble bribe. Mischievously I thought about earning an excellent living by writing four books a year about the ambassador's country and accepting payments for each work I did not publish. All I would need to do was send the first drafts of the books to him for his comments and sit back for the money to come pouring in.
I am breaking my silence now because, 10 years later and with hindsight, it all seems like a ridiculous storm in a tea cup. The nervous system of my publisher has had time to calm and heal; the ambassador in question has moved on, his country has reportedly learnt from some of its gross and more hideous mistakes and to have actually progressed socially, democratically and in equality between the sexes since I first wrote my book. So maybe it has become more reformative and less worried by free thought and free speech, more mature, grown up and reasonable than it used to be, and less sensitive to the truths that have been leaking out about it. But it is still beheading people and stoning them to death.