Hons and rebels [antikvár]

Introduction to the iç8ç Edition Looking back over three decades to the pubhcation in i960 of my first book, I can still recapture the feeling of intense excitement when I learned it had been accepted by Victor Gollancz, whom I had long admired from afar as founder of the pre-war Left Book Club. The book was published simultaneously by Houghton Mifflin in America. I am grateful to Liz Knights, Editorial Director of Gollancz, for reprinting Hons and Rebels, and for the opportunity to comment here on some aspects of the original publication: differences between the English and American editions; reactions of my family; and the surprising intervention of my mother, hitherto unknown to me, about the question of a tide for the book. Pubhshers on both sides of the Atiantic tend to pride themselves on their freedom from the sort of censorship, stemming from fear of persons in high places, routinely exercised by the daily press. Yet looking over the two editions of my book, English and American, do I detect a certain deference to the powerful in the respective countries? Victor Gollancz and Houghton Mifflin had been sent identical manuscripts. In the HM edition, following the account of my disastrous indoctrination of the dancing-class children into the facts of life, occurs the sentence: ' "And - even the King and Queen do it!" I added impressively.' VG, apparendy, thought this possibly offensive to the Palace so omitted it from his