Dr. Roderick Cave, printing and book expert, recounted the history of author Somerset Struben de Chair, his publisher Christopher Sandford, and his printing company to an audience of community members and faculty yesterday in a speech entitled "The Politician and the Printer."
The Golden Cockerel Press, de Chair's printing company, was a small but respected private publishing firm that printed limited-edition and ornate books. The company published several books by de Chair, and Sandford was in charge of the company during the time that those publications were printed.
"There was a warm friendship between the two," Cave said of de Chair, the "politician" of the pair, and Sandford, the "printer."
The closeness of their relationship was apparent when de Chair gave Sandford a "free hand" in printing his final Golden Cockerel book, allowing the publisher the ultimate decision in font and illustrations.
De Chair achieved fame through the Golden Cockerel when his book "The Golden Carpet" was published in 1943. The book became a huge success, partly because it was a "surprisingly frank" story about de Chair's experience in the Middle-Eastern theater of World War II, including criticism of his superior officers, Cave said. Because he had friends in key government positions, he was able to save most of the story from the British wartime censorship.
Cave also attributed the success of the book to the lack of paper that most other publishing firms experienced because of strict paper rationing during World War II. The Golden Cockerel avoided this paper limit because they used handmade paper.
Although there were biographical details of Sandford's life and historical details about the Golden Cockerel Press, the emphasis was on de Chair, who died in 1994 at the age of 83.
"He was a bit of an odd one," Cave said of de Chair, a protg of Winston Churchill's.
As a Member of the British Parliament, de Chair was conservative, but he was very active in the United Nations, which Cave said was "unlikely for a Tory Member of Parliament."
Although de Chair was anti-communism and wrote of the danger that the Bolsheviks posed, he owned artwork by communist painters.
"De Chair respected the artist and did not care about the politics," Cave said.
De Chair based his book "The Story of a Lifetime" on a dream that his second wife had about the crucifixion of Jesus. The story presupposes that Jesus did not die on the cross and instead lived many years after his supposed death. As a conservative Member of Parliament mindful of his constituents, he decided to have the heretical book published by the Golden Cockerel in limited edition.
De Chair married three times and made no secret of the fact that he had mistresses.
"He enumerated women he had slept for his biography. He was one of the early kiss-and-tell people," Cave said.
Cave has held a number of prestigious positions, including Foundation Professor of Librarianship at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and head of Information Studies at Nanyang University in Singapore. He was also wrote "History of the Golden Cockerel Press, 1920-1960," and his articles have appeared frequently in the prestigious annual publication "Matrix," a book-printing magazine.
The speech was delivered to a crowd of about 30 in Carson Hall. There were no students in attendance.
