| Description | Second part of an interview with Dr. Harold Watt recorded on 18 November 1985 by John Hargreaves. Continuation of MS 3620/1/33/1 (Dr. Watt is recalling his experiences as Managing Director of Aberdeen University Press.)
Interview transcript:
W In my capacity as still a director of the Press, albeit non-executive, I can record that particularly following and because of the change in Press policy six or seven years ago to develop the AUP imprint as a mainly academic publishing one as well as a self-respecting printing imprint, there is a continuing determination to try to ensure that the Press never does anything to displease or let down in any way the University whose name it is uniquely privileged to wear. It has of course to be remembered that the first Chairman of the Press after it became a company was a Professor of the University, William Ramsay, Professor of Humanity, who later became Sir William Ramsay. The Press was founded in 1840 by three brothers King, under the firm name of A. King and Company. Increasingly, through the last decades of the century it carried out printing for the University, also established a reputation for book printing of an educational scholastic nature, mainly for London publishers. Performing the functions of a university press by the 1870s and 1880s, it was freely using versions of a university press imprint on the stuff that it printed. For instance, there was the imprint A. King and Company; A. King and Company, Printers to Aberdeen University; A. King and Company, University Printers; and then the A. King and Company already, I think, by 1880 was falling out altogether and The University Press, Aberdeen was being used as an imprint, Aberdeen University Press. And then in the year 1900 the proprietor, John Thomson, in conjunction with Professor Ramsay, planned the conversion of Thomson's printing firm into a public company - a public company in the technical, legal sense of these words. A company name had to be registered, and the name that was duly registered was The Aberdeen University Press Ltd. Professor Ramsay, we can only presume, squared his university colleagues on the matter of the use by him as a private individual of the University's name in the context of a wholly separate, purely commercial endeavour. I believe that somebody within the last few decades did try to check within the Minutes of the University Court and/or the Senatus in the year 1900 as to whether anything got consigned to black and white with regard to the squaring by Professor Ramsay of his colleagues in this matter, and I believe that the answer to this research was unsuccessful; there was no record there at all. I would like to have the opportunity, or I would like somebody to take the opportunity some time, of just checking again - it would be a matter of real interest. The company, at any rate, The Aberdeen University Press Ltd., was formed, a company prospectus was issued (I've got copies of it), the company's shares were offered to the public, and later quoted on the Stock Exchange. A Board of Directors had to be appointed and the first Board of Directors appointed William Ramsay, Professor of Humanity, as its first Chairman. He remained Chairman of the Press until he retired from his University post as Sir William Ramsay in, I think, 1914. Now, all this early endeavour in university/industry liaison is told at greater length and most entertainingly I think by Alex Keith in his 1963 History of the University Press which we were very fortunate to get A.K. to write for us.
H You described a very remarkable story of co-operation between a university and a press, a printing house, to which it has been a valued customer and from which it has received great services in the past. I wonder if you would see the relationship changing or becoming difficult in any way now that Aberdeen University Press is only a small part of a very much larger financial empire?
W It was in 1978 that the redoubtable Robert Maxwell got his way. I have first-hand evidence that he had coveted ownership of the Press for at least twenty years prior to that and he did, in fact, in the course of these years make two or three very positive and deliberate offers to purchase, but devious means were found to deflect him, because we were apprehensive about the prospect. Nevertheless, he got what he wanted, 100% ownership of the Press; in 1978, and he got that because the directors recognised that they were wholly vulnerable and the purchases of the Press could not be prevented. We continued to have our apprehensions but, as I have hinted before, one of the first of the relatively few changes that Robert brought about was to spot that the company name was an exceptionally valuable asset and that we were under-utilising that asset by using it almost wholly as a printer's imprint. ''It can so readily become additionally an academic publishing imprint - get on with the development of your imprint as a publishing one". Well, that was easily said, what had to be done in the first place was to find an appropriate, an able publishing colleague for myself, and I reckon that one of the greatest strokes of good fortune that has befallen me was the availability at the time of the very man for the job: Colin MacLean, Aberdeen graduate (honours MA 1950) a few years younger than I, hard had a career mainly in the better varieties of journalism, starting with The Glasgow Herald, going on to The Daily Telegraph, going on to The Times in the early 1950s, where, incidentally, one of his responsibilities was the editing of "Letters to the Editor" - a very responsible job, one imagines. Still on the payroll of The Times, he was given the function of Editor in Edinburgh of the Scottish version of The Times Educational Supplement, and he did that job, based in Edinburgh, for about twelve or thirteen years. And during that time, of course, he had every contacts with everybody who was anybody within the total Scottish educational world, from the eight University Principals downwards on the university side and throughout the whole of the schools side. Everybody who mattered required to be known personally by the editor of that important educational journal. He switched from that niche in Edinburgh to Chambers, the publishers, but within a year or so it became clear that Chambers and Colin McLean didn't 'click' and he was in 1979 looking out for a job and so he came to us and it was he who had the challenge of effecting as quickly as possible - because it was Robert Maxwell who was insisting that it be done, and everything that he wants done has to be done quickly - building up quickly a respectable academic publishing imprint; and there are lots of things that I could say about the excitement that has been generated in the Press by virtue of this new activity. Remember that from 1840 up until 1978 the policy of the Press had been a canny one, perhaps, but probably a sensible one, a level-headed one ''lets try to do one thing well rather than more than one thing perhaps not so well'', and anybody who knows anything about the subject knows how as different as chalk is from cheese printing is from publishing - two very different activities. Well, all that I would say is that Colin has done a tremendously energetic job and I would already pronounce, a very successful job in this task of establishing the AUP imprint as a responsible and in every way a respectable one within the context of academic publishing.
H Finally, to close the interview, I wonder if you would like to try and sum up your view of Aberdeen University as you have known it and as it is today: its strong points and its weak points too?
W Well, I had a go at listing such. I've got one bit of paper headed 'Plus points' and another bit of paper headed 'Minus points'. By plus points I think I mean specific aspects of Aberdeen University from my knowledge of it that I can only admire, and I have mentioned some of them. I don't recall in this interview fetching up very any very critical or negative points. Amongst the plus points I have noted the Chapel, a symbol of the University's great antiquity but also a means of continuity between the generations. I was married there, my daughter was married there, it's been the background - the backcloth - for many intimate occasions. I think the University has had great good fortune in its successive Chaplains; not excluding the present one; I think that justice is done to its wonderful setting by the sheer excellence of presentation of its inter-denominational services Sunday by Sunday during term time. Then another heading is 'Music' I have touched on it already - another aspect of excellence, certainly currently in the Chapel, as evidenced by quite excellent choral support for the services there; and there is, I think, music generated of the highest order in the context of instrumental and orchestral music making, all of which is shared with the general public of Aberdeen, and there, if anywhere, is a very fine link between Gown and Town. There's the Library - we don't always think about it, but we should think how fortunate we are in having such a large university library, for one thing such a comprehensive library and all within the bounds of prudence nicely open, and there's a friendly mien about it. And then, still on 'plus points', I've got to list there the series of volumes comprising the Roll of Graduates. I have had this close identification with the series through my father and then through my intimate contact with the editors of the fourth volume, Louise Donald and W.S. Macdonald. And then there's excitement in my mind, and I hope to spread that feeling of excitement, about the prospect that is now being actively discussed of the information that might become the contents of a fifth volume; one certainly hopes that this whole endeavour is going to continue indefinitely into the future, that the contents will be stored now in something that might be called a Graduate Information Database. I think there is an exciting prospect for the university cashing in on the new technology. One of the by-products of this database will be a more economically produced fifth volume of the Roll of Graduates. Then, what are other plus points? The sympathetic building and reconstruction initiatives the University has been able to take since the Second War in Old Aberdeen, in many cases with resounding yet undemonstrative success. Of course, I am thinking, a little before the Second World War, of the Elphinstone Hall, how it blends so well with the rest of the campus and I suppose I am also thinking of the buildings along the lanes - the various cottages and so on which have been rehabilitated in Old Aberdeen. Then in what other respects is the University fortunate? Surely we are terribly fortunate in what can only be described as a lavish provision of recreational facilities at the disposal of any student -:who wants them and they are put also at the disposal of graduates and others. One thinks of everything that is out at Balgownie and everything that is inside the Butchart Building. Another point of sheer excellence, something that the university is supremely good at; ceremonial excellence, all the restrained but might and proper and admirable panache of the five graduation ceremonies; evidenced also on Armistice Sunday at King's when it's a joy to experience so much that is moving, and that's moving because it is done properly and but in order but with no element of regimentation. Then I listed as a plus point one subject that I have already touched upon: the University's policy, or at any rate the fact, of the variety in the kind of Principal that it has chosen, or that it has recommended the Queen to choose, over the years since the turn of the century; each of the Faculties has in turn had its share of positive and knowledgeable interest on the part of a Principal - so far, with the exception of the Faculty of Science. Now then, before I finish answering your last query, I might just mention one change in the character of the university community which strikes one - I don't think it's more than a rather superficial point but nevertheless it comes to mind from time to time - the absence of 'characters' on the university staff, academic staff. I think back to Douglas Young on the campus at King's in my day, the bearded seven footer with all kinds of eccentricities; I have mentioned Geoffrey Bickersteth, this Englishman to the fingertips yet before he left Aberdeen easily mistaken for an Aberdonian by virtue of his loyalty to the place of his adoption. Douglas Simpson, who many of us referred to as 'Fossil' - again a man who could only be described fairly as a character. Colonel Butchart, as Secretary, a kilted figure on the touch-line at King's at rugby matches on a Saturday afternoon. Roy Strathdee, cut somewhat in the same mould - again a character and a most likeable one. And D.M. Mackinnon, still back in Old Aberdeen, but in his day in Aberdeen remarkable for his absentmindedness; and there's the story the truth of which I can't vouch for but it's my most enjoyable D.M. Mackinnon story: one lunchtime he was proceeding along Union Street, met a lady of his acquaintance, got into conversation with her; when they were about to part company D.M. Mackinnon asked the lady, "By the way, when we met can you tell me which direction I was heading in?" And the lady, quite surprised, gave him the answer that of course he was heading towards Castle Street. D.M. Mackinnon's reply thereafter was "Thank you so much now I know that I've had my lunch.'' I had another bit of paper headed 'Minus points' by which I put a sub-heading of 'Specific aspects of Aberdeen University of which I am more or less critical'. That bit of paper is blank.
H Thank you very much, Dr. Watt.
END OF INTERVIEW
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