User talk:Radh/Cold Turkey Press

I had a look at CTP site. I suspect that Heathcote sent over the plates for them to publish after he printed and bound the original book in hardback at the old press at Port Eliot, and possibly before we reprinted it in Wordworks. I have a copy of the hardback inscribed from the anonymous author and suspect there were less than 100 produced. The cover is exactly the same.

I can't remember those two pieces by Paul, I didn't get involved with Butterworth's publications until just after that http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/presavoy.html Altcult101 (talk) 12:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Hardcover "Abdication"

One of the hardcover copies of "The Abdication of Elizabeth II" found its way to Toronto and hence into my hands a few years ago. I've been trying since to find anything I can about its history. My copy contains a photocopied page from a magazine (possibly "We are all one flesh"?) with a brief item about the book. The sheet (not the book) is inscribed "from the anonymous author printer and binder to the anonymous recipient. 1978." The article says: Like the letters of Junius, it is an anonymous manifestation: no one knows who wrote it, printed it or produced it. It first appears in a crude gestetner form and was reproduced by aficionados. It was also read out as a news item on England's only surviving pirate radio station, Rebel Radio, which led to a flurry of activity by the G.P.O. detector vans, and the police, who cordoned off the street from which the transmission was being made, leading to seven arrests and the seizure of a jammed-up tea-caddy which they thought contained a transmitter, but the transmitter and newsreader escaped into republican ozone over the roof-tops.

It then appeared in a limited edition on hand made paper, embossed with gold, and was distributed free at Windsor Free Festival, the largest squat in English history (copies of which are now changing hands at £25.00).

Then follows a publication notice for the Open Head Press reprint, with address, price (£1.50) and publication info (paperback, 500 copies). There is an illustration of a comic book style cover of the book. On the back, in a different hand than the inscription, is written "Jasper Heathcote-Williams, Open Head Press, 2 Blenhieim Crescent, London W11".

I can easily believe that less than 100 were printed, as the printing is letterpress (very crisp with rubrics and decorations) and though the binding is well done, the black silk appears to have been applied to the boards with the wrong glue which has soaked through slightly, and the gold stamped title is just a bit sloppy, all of which suggests hand-work rather than any kind of mass production. --Proptology (talk) 23:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, among a certain circle of friends no one knew who had written it for about five seconds. My hardback is inscribed to me by the "anonymous author printer and binder" in his unmistakeable handwriting. The tone of voice in the article you quote is also very much his and I recall his days of being active with a London pirate radio station. I subsequently arranged for it to be published, fully credited in a Manchester based literary magazine called Wordworks in 1976. In 1978 a piece with a similar vibe called Natty Hallelujah was published in The Savoy Book. "Jasper" is a name he never used but Heathcote and the designer (ex-Oz magazine)Richard Adams were partners in the Open Head Press, which at 2 Blenheim Crescent, was right in the centre of London's radical culture scene in the 70s. Heathcote was an occasional long term guest on the estate of Lord Eliot in Cornwall and I think this is where an antique printing press was used to print the hardback edition. Hope this helps. Altcult101 (talk) 17:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)