From:	John Pettifew Clark
To:	Crowmarsh, Eustace
	[mail to:ecrowmarsh@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk]
Subject:	Hugh Thomson – Mule Book

Dear Eustace,

Good to catch you briefly on the phone at your Frankfurt meeting. Quite understand you didn’t have time to talk. Can’t help thinking, though, that it’s a shame the tradition of publishers’ lunches is on the wane – a text and a Pret a Manger chilled sandwich is about as good as it gets these days.

Anyway, my thoughts on Thomson, for what it’s worth. As you know, I still find him insufferably irresponsible, and question your wisdom in letting him loose on the reading public. At least you’ve taken my advice after the last book (or perhaps he did himself, as you managed to leave my letter at the end of the MS, much to my embarrassment – try not to do that this time), and hitched him up with an animal: one uniquely suited to his own character, in the same way that dogs always choose their owners.

Admittedly, given his own stubbornness, undiplomatic forthrightness and fondness for pies, he seems to have met his match in Yorkshire. Indeed, actually quite liked it. And there are fewer gratuitous insults than in the last Green Road into the Trees outing. Although does he really need to tell us he voted to remain in Europe? Probably lost half his readers at one fell swoop. Or rather 51.9% of them.

What worries me is that this could be shaping up to be a trilogy, like his books on South America. I suspect he will head even further north next and over the border to Scotland, which could be fraught with problems. The Scots don’t mind the English appreciating their wild places, but they will certainly mind Thomson talking about the actual people he meets and tweaking their tartan-covered tails. They’re notoriously thin-skinned.

Just warning you now. Personally I’d dump him completely and get one of these new nature writers who seem to sell so well, and confine themselves strictly to beasts and birdies and the lyricism of the landscape – even if their books are bought more to display on the oak dresser than actually to read.

The copy-edited manuscript is attached. I have followed normal UK and Penguin Random House publishing practice in my editing and instructions to the typesetter. I have also tried as before to remove the author’s frequent solecisms, repetitions, anachronisms, incorrect use of quotation marks when quoting from partial sentences, and use of prepositions to end sentences and sometimes – unbelievably – even whole paragraphs. I can’t believe the man went to – and presumably received some education from – a well-known public school, although I understand they kicked him out before he could finish. Quite right too. I would have as well.

Still think it would be good to have another lunch at the Garrick sometime?

Yours

John

John Pettifew Clark

PS And don’t forget to take this out! I sometimes wonder if you bother to read these editorial notes at all.