Terry Taylor, author and counterculture figure

In 2010 - when Five Leaves was building a reputation for its New London Editions series - we were regularly approached by people suggesting new titles. Within a three month period three people suggested Baron's Court, All Change by Terry Taylor, a London novel first published in 1961 by the late, great MacGibbon & Kee. The book became our eighth New London Edition title, coming out in 2011 to great reviews in the TLS and elsewhere.
One of those who approached us was the author and performance artist Stewart Home. He told us that so desperate was he at one stage to have the book republished he'd photocopied 200 copies of the original and passed them around, hoping for an impact. In due course Stewart wrote the introduction to Terry's novel and spoke at our one meeting on the book, the meeting at which Terry slipped in quietly at the back, his only public appearance (if it can be called that) about Baron's Court. I wasn't at the event and never met Terry, though we had an amiable correspondence. He was very comfortable with the book but had moved on since it was first written. His life was different and he'd become, happily, a sandwich-maker in Rhyl, where he lived quietly with his "favourite gym instructor", his wife Wendy, as the dedication said in our edition. At one time an important paper - was it The Times? - was interested in interviewing him. Was he worried that his cover would be broken? No, he said, nobody in Rhyl reads The Times.
There was a personal connection between Stewart and Terry. Terry had helped out Stewart's mother when she was in difficulties, but primarily Stewart thought that Baron's Court was the best book of the British beatnik era. And it might well be.
The book documents one summer in the life of an unnamed sixteen year old narrator. He leaves his suburban home and boring job as a shop assistant for a "pad" in central London, paid for after he moves into dealing dope. Along the way he dabbles in spiritualism and has an affair with an older woman. There's a lot of dope in the book, which was also the first novel to mention LSD.
Terry was born in 1933 and was the inspiration for Colin MacInnes' Absolute Beginners. He was the assistant to the photographer Ida Kar, and her lover, despite the difference in age. Kar was the photographer of that era, that scene, and photographs of Terry are in the National Portrait Gallery. They can be seen here - http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp83304/terry-taylor. As you can see, he was not averse to a bit of dope himself.
A second novel was turned down by MacGibbon & Kee as being too experimental. It has not survived. Terry, however, wrote a third novel The Run, which is still unpublished. I read the manuscript and, with some editing and rewrites, it would be worth publishing. The book explores the drug scene/drug dealing among British people in North Africa. It is racier than Esther Freud's Hideous Kinky and, of course, the parts of the story that don't quite ring true are based on real things that happened! Terry and I talked about publishing the book, making the necessary changes, but we never took the discussion to any conclusion.
Terry retained an interest in North Africa but also spent a lot of time in Goa, sending cheery emails to say he was there again.
Terry Taylor died a few days ago, after a short illness. He is survived by his favourite gym instructor and their daughters Amy and Zoe and an older daughter, Tracy, from a previous relationship.
Ross Bradshaw

Absolute Beginners

Rereading Colin Macinnes's Absolute Beginners, I was reminded just how exciting the book is. Jerry White has a good chapter on it in our London Fictions and it is one London novel I would dearly love to have on our New London Editions list, not least because of the book's other Five Leaves connections, Unfortunately for us, Allison and Busby, under a series of owners, keeps the book on their list.
It was first published in 1959 by - who else? - MacGibbon and Key, my favourite publisher of the era but remains completely fresh.
Rather than rehearse the full story of the book - you can read a version of Jerry's introduction on the London Fictions website at http://www.londonfictions.com/colin-macinnes-absolute-beginners.html.
There he mentions that Manny and Miriam Katz is based on Bernard and Erica Kops (we've published a couple of books by Bernard) and reading the book you can hear Bernard's voice has not changed since Macinnes used him as a character in the 1950s to today. Bernard has told me a few stories about Macinnes's visits to his house. Having read a lot about Macinnes I was not surprised he was often drunk, rude and dominating. Not someone to forget, but not always someone to dislike. Bernard is more tolerant than me, I should say.
The second Five Leaves connection is that the anonymous teenage narrator of the book - a photographer who deals in fashion and porno photography (or what passed as porno at the time, about as pornographic as the side bars of the Daily Mail website) is based on Terry Taylor whose one published book, Baron's Court, All Change is a steady seller on our New London Editions list. That too was originally published by MacGibbon and Key.

Beats, Bums and ebooks

When I asked Laura Del-Rivo if it was OK to publish her book in an ebook format as well as the print edition she replied, with her usual enthusiasm, "Yes, of course, what are ebooks?" That is a good question, and here we are publishing them, though I've never read a book in an ebook format and perhaps never will. No self-respecting beatnik would, surely? Battered paperbacks are more the style. But anyway, here, for the non-beats out there, our whole set in an ebook format, £4.99 each, from all platforms as well as kindle.

New from Five Leaves: Baron's Court, All Change

We're publishing a set of Soho/Boho novels that first came out in 1961 - the first is now in our office and can be ordered here: http://tinyurl.com/taylor-barons. It's not yet in the shops or Amazon, but will be very soon. This is Terry Taylor's only published novel. We've mentioned him before - the young lover of Ida Kar, the inspiration for a character in Absolute Beginners... This is a novel about being a young person in and around the drug scene - indeed this was the first UK novel to mention LSD, a subject Terry knew quite a lot about. You can find out a lot more about the book on http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/sex/baronscourt.htm. Indeed, Stewart Home has written the introduction to the book. We're grateful to Pablo Behrens for the cover image, which does reflect the book very well. Terry is alive, fit and well, living in Rhyll as he has been for some decades now, slightly bemused that after fifty years his days in the early Beat scene have resurfaced. Actually Terry had the most interesting life, hanging round in Tangiers with William Burroughs, as you do. My guess is that this will be the best-selling book we publish this year, once word gets round, as it has only been available online, and rarely that, for a few hundred pounds. The holy grail of Beatnik literature.