Diary of a Master Printer: A Year in the Life of the Printer to the University, Oxford

In 1970 one of Oxford’s great institutions, Oxford University Press, was in crisis – beset by financial woes, management infighting, industrial strife and a technological revolution. This previously unpublished, vivid diary gives a no-holds-
barred insider’s account of a critical year. Vivian Ridler, as Printer to the University, was at the heart of a major part of the business, the Printing House, for centuries known as the pinnacle of book production in Britain – indeed the world. Here he writes candidly of the challenges he faces from powerful unions and ever more demanding publishing colleagues. His acute and often humorous observations bring the story alive. And as a man of wide interests and tastes he meets leading figures: Philip Larkin, Helen Gardner and Michael Holroyd from the world of literature, great typographers like Brooke Crutchley, Will Carter and Berthold Wolpe, historians like Alan Bullock and Robert Blake, heads of Oxford colleges and the Bodleian, politicians and captains of indus- try. As a board director he gives frank advice to the Oxford Playhouse and Oxford Polytechnic. He makes elaborate 8mm films, watches a Peter Brooke production at Stratford where the director ‘wrestles with one Bill Shakespeare’, and celebrates the first night of Elizabeth Maconchy’s opera The Jesse Tree, with a libretto by his wife Anne.
With an extensive introduction and footnotes provided by the Editor, the diary will be of interest to anyone who loves Oxford and its rich past, or seeks to learn about or be reminded of a bygone and pivotal era.