successful. School books and Jane’s
Fighting Ships were among their
assets.
As things turned out,
Macdonald’s chose to retain only
two of John Lehmann’s authors. I
was one of those unfortunate ones.
The other was the American Paul
Bowles, author of the much-
acclaimed novel The Sheltering Sky.
Paul, as he told me later, was soon
able to shake off his contractual
ties with John Lehmann’s
successors. I was not so lucky.
Sometime in 1954 or 1955 I
received an odd letter from one of
the Macdonald directors. He