Chapter 11 - A House is Rebuilt

Summary

I hope it will not be long before the Angus & Robertson joint export apparatus reaps an export harvest for Australian publishers. I think we are well on the way to doing this because so many Australian publishers want to have a UK outlet.

From the late 1940s and 1950s, the London office was characterised by Hector MacQuarrie as one of ‘purely English infancy’. The first half of the 1960s was marked by a maturing identity crisis. Gone was the ‘old type family concern’ in which editorial horsepower was more important than sales or production. In its place was a modern company; a company which was more complex and heavier on the retail side and superintended large-scale shareholder investments that required dividends. Having ‘rocked so violently’ through the Burns’ (and later Packer's) takeover episodes, Angus & Robertson was ‘now fairly steady on her keel’ after the British publisher William Collins (along with George G. Harrap and William Heinemann) provided a ‘stabilizing influence’ through their purchase of 30 per cent of Angus & Robertson's shares.

Content not to throw about its weight, Collins appeared prepared ‘to lend strength to see that no more robber barons upset the place’.