Right Book Club

The Right Book Club was an English book club founded in 1937 by Christina and William Foyle to counter the influential Left Book Club, established in 1936 by Victor Gollancz.[1]

Origins and character

In May 1936, the Left Book Club had been established, and towards the end of 1936 a group of “neo-Tories” mooted the idea of a right-wing book club. Christina Foyle and her father William Foyle undertook to organize it, and the Club was launched at a luncheon at the Grosvenor House Hotel in April 1937, with John Baird, 1st Viscount Stonehaven, the recently-retired Chairman of the Conservative Party, presiding.[2]

The Right Book Club published one book every month, occasionally acting as the first publisher, but more often reprinting a recent new title from a mainstream publisher. Its members received a monthly magazine, and meetings with authors were also held. Membership was free, and members committed themselves to buying the monthly book,[2] which cost 2s 6d (half a crown). The first book appeared in June 1937.[3]

Arthur Bryant saw the Right Book Club as too radical, and responded by founding a similar monthly book club, the National Book Association, where he intended to be more moderate, and Stanley Baldwin agreed to be its President. However, in January 1939 Bryant's association published an expurgated translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Baldwin resigned in protest,[4] and this proved to be the last book the NBA published.[5]

By 1939, the Right Book Club claimed 20,000 subscribers, in comparison with some 50,000 members of the Left Book Club and 5,000 of the National Book Association. On 3 November 1939, the humorist A. G. Macdonell replied to an invitation from Christina Foyle to join the Club, "I had no idea that there were twenty thousand members of the Right in politics who could read."[6]

Whereas all volumes of the Left Book Club had the same appearance, a soft binding coloured solid orange, with plain black lettering, the Right Book Club described its books as "on good quality paper, with attractive STIFF binding and dignified coloured jacket". A commentator has said that this was a subtly English way to distance the two clubs: "The bindings are as stiff as a colonel's upper lip, not limp as a lounge lizard's handshake."[7]

In 2022, the critic Clive Bloom claimed that the Right Book Club was "thought up by Sir Oswald Mosley to promote fascism", without providing any source for this claim.[8]

Endorsements

In the club's early days, three notable figures gave endorsements of it.[3]

In a posthumous message written shortly before his death, Austen Chamberlain, a former Conservative Party leader, commented "I welcome the appearance of the 'Right' Book Club. I have learned to trust the judgment of our people when the truth is made available to them."[3]

George Lloyd, 1st Baron Lloyd, a Conservative on the "Diehard" wing of the party, said "I am glad to learn of the popularity and progress of the 'Right' Book Club. A great responsibility as well as an opportunity of doing work of last national importance lies before the Club."[3]

Lord Sempill, a well-known aviator, said "The work which you are doing deserves the support of all thinking men and women."[3]

Selection committee

A committee aimed to select one book per month for publication and consisted of Anthony Ludovici, Norman Thwaites, Trevor Blakemore, Collinson Owen, and W. A. Foyle.[9][10]

Principal authors

The writers of more than one book published by the Right Book Club were:[11]

Other authors included Clare Hollingworth, Hesketh Pearson, Ian Hay, Hugh Kingsmill, Edward Shanks, James Bridie, Arnold Lunn, Aubrey Jones, R. Welldon Finn, C. E. Vulliamy, Mairin Mitchell, and Harley Williams.[11]

Patrons

The published list of the club’s patrons included:[3]

Publications

1937
  • Rex Welldon Finn, The English Heritage (June 1937)
  • Laurence Housman, Victoria Regina (July 1937)
  • W. H. Chamberlin, A False Utopia (August 1937), an inside picture of Communism and Fascism.
  • C. J. M. Alport, Kingdoms in Partnership (September 1937), the story of the Imperial Commonwealth.
  • G. Ward Price, I Know These Dictators (October 1937), a "close up" of Hitler and Mussolini.
  • Harold Cardozo, The March of a Nation: My Year of Spain's Civil War (November 1937), an account of the Spanish War by an English war correspondent
  • Douglas Jerrold, Georgian Adventure (December 1937), about King George V's reign
  • Sir Charles Petrie, Lords of the Inland Sea: A Study of the Mediterranean Powers (1937)

1938
  • Fred E. Beal, Word from Nowhere (January 1938), an indictment of the Communist system
  • Sir Charles Petrie, The Chamberlain Tradition (February 1938) about Joseph, Austen and Neville Chamberlain.
  • W. H. Chamberlin, Japan Over Asia (March 1938), an interpretation of Japan's foreign policy
  • Viscount Lymington, Famine in England (April 1938), the case for a constructive social policy on health and well-being
  • William Teeling, Why Britain Prospers (May 1938), a study of current political and economic conditions
  • Sir Arnold Wilson, Thoughts and Talks (June 1938), thoughts of a Member of Parliament
  • W. S. Shears, This England (July 1938), a guide to rural England
  • Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (August 1938), a critique of the Soviet Union
  • Sir Philip Gibbs, Ordeal in England (September 1938), a commentary on current events
  • Prince Christopher of Greece, Memoirs by H.R.H. Prince Christopher of Greece (October 1938)
  • A. J. Mackenzie, Propaganda Boom (November 1938) a study of propaganda in totalitarian states
  • William Foss and Cecil Gerahty, Spanish Arena (December 1938), an account of the Spanish Civil War

1939

1940
  • "Watchman" (Vyvyan Adams), Right Honourable Gentlemen (1940)
  • Edvard Benes, Democracy: Today and tomorrow (1940)
  • Bernard Newman, The Secrets of German Espionage (1940)
  • A. G. Street, A Year of My Life (1940)
  • W. G. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent (1940)
  • Vladimir Unishevsky, translated by Violet M. Macdonald, Red Pilot: Memoirs of a Soviet Airman (1940)

1941
  • Ralph Ingersoll, Report on England (1941)
  • L. De Jong, Holland Fights the Nazis (1941)
  • Eugene Lyons, Stalin, Czar of all the Russias (1941)
  • Ivor Halstead, Wings of Victory: a tribute to the R.A.F. (1941)
  • Clarence K. Streit, Union Now With Britain (1941)
  • Stephen Leacock, Our British empire: its structure, its history, its strength (1941)
  • André Simone, J'Accuse! The Men Who Betrayed France (1941)
  • Robert Sencourt, Winston Churchill (1941)

1942
  • Edward Ardizzone, Baggage to the Enemy (1942), experiences in France and Belgium, illustrated by the author
  • Mairin Mitchell, Back to England: an Account of the Author's Travels on the Continent from 1937 to 1939 and Her Observations on Wartime Conditions in Britain in 1940 (1942)
  • Ivor Halstead, Heroes of the Atlantic: a tribute to the Merchant Navy (1942)
  • Storm Jameson, The Fort (1942)
  • Hermann Rauschning, Make and Break with the Nazis (1942)
  • L. De Jong, Holland Fights the Nazis (1942)
  • Adam Mickiewicz, My Name is Million (1942)
  • Quentin Reynolds, Don't Think it Hasn't Been Fun (1942)
  • E. S. Bates, Soviet Asia: Progress and Problems (1942)
  • Strategicus, From Tobruk to Smolensk (1942)

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947
  • Robert S. Arbib Jr., Here we are together: the notebook of an American Soldier in Britain (1947)
  • Aubrey Jones, The Pendulum of Politics (1947)
  • Clifton Reynolds, Autobiography (1947)
  • Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried's journey, 1916-1920 (1947)
  • Henry Williamson, Life in a Devon Village (1947)
  • George Sava, They Come By Appointment (1947)

1948
  • C. E. Vulliamy, Ursa Major: a study of Dr. Johnson and his friends (1948)[12]
  • John Fischer, The Scared Men in the Kremlin (1948)

1949

1950

Undated

Notes
  1. Russi Jal Taraporevala, Competition and its control in the British book trade, 1850–1939 (London: Pitman, 1973, ISBN 9780273001447), p. 236
  2. Bernhard Dietz, Neo-Tories: The Revolt of British Conservatives against Democracy and Political Modernity (1929-1939) (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), p. 108
  3. Right Book Club, publishinghistory.com, accessed 22 July 2021
  4. Dietz (2018), p. 109
  5. Julia Stapleton, Sir Arthur Bryant and National History in Twentieth-century Britain (Lexington Books, 2005), p. 119
  6. Dietz (2018), p. 110
  7. Stuart Sillars, Picturing England Between the Wars: Word and Image 1918-1940 (Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 127
  8. Clive Bloom, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900 (2022), p. 122
  9. E. H. H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 151
  10. G. C. Webber, The Ideology of the British Right, 1918–1939 (Croom Helm, 1986) p. 161
  11. Right Book Club, Open Library, accessed 25 July 2021
  12. Ursa Major: a study of Dr. Johnson and his friends, openlibrary.org, accessed 23 July 2021

Further reading
  • Terence Rodgers, "The Right Book Club: text wars, modernity and cultural politics in the late thirties" in Literature & History 12.2 (2003), pp. 1–15
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