The Aardvark Blog

Tough times for the book trade, Amadeus Quartet, Lee Miller Documentary
4/05/2020

I try to always make this blog as cheerful as I can - there are many other opportunities to be sad - but I am feeling a little sad today with the news that it looks as if Bertrams the booktrade wholesaler is facing the end of the road. I first remember Bertrams back in the 80's when it was still a family run business and a friend of mine who ran a film bookshop would have weekly calls from Mrs Bertram asking him to settle his account. They were very early into providing technology to bookshops and for many years sponsored different prizes and awards within the booktrade. Barring a last minute saviour it looks as if they will disappear from the scene and we will be left  with a single book wholesaler in this country.

At a time when many bookshops are struggling during the lockdown, and publishers are stepping up their efforts to sell books direct online, 2020 is looking a very tough year for the booktrade. Still with my positive hat on I believe strongly that the British booktrade contains a tremendously talented and dedicated group of people and if solutions can be found I am convinced that they will find them.

Another sad piece of news I read today is that Martin Lovett the last surviving member of the Amadeus Quartet has recently died. For those growing up in the seventies and eighties the Amadeus were synonymous with a particularly kind of musical seriousness - and for that matter a particular kind of middle-european sensibility. Lovett was the only one of the group not to have been forced by war from his homeland, but his parents had emigrated to Britain and he in turn married a Hungarian musician. The debt that British (and for that matter American) cultural life owes to that generation of often though not exclusively, Jewish emigrants from Europe cannot be overestimated. They made London the world centre for music, they made Britain a centre for art and art dealing, they produced the most wonderful ceramics, they founded banks and financial institutions, and even one or two restaurants. I remember spending Sunday afternoons in Cosmos on Finchley Road eating strudel and surrounded by members of that same group of North London intellectuals. Sadly Cosmos is now gone, as have so many of those familiar faces. In truth, the Amadeus recordings, when one hears them, sound somewhat old fashioned to modern ears, but that is not to denigrate the seriousness of their intent or the success they had at bringing the core of German music to a British and International audience over some four decades.

Finally I have been told by Ethel Aardvark to watch the Lee Miller documentary that was on BBC4 over the weekend. Lee Miller is a perenially interesting figure and I am delighted that her work has now been brought to an even wider audience.

Good Humour and book talk will commence in the next blog I promise.