Hugh Lamb

HUGH: I grew up in a house where M.R. James, Robert W. Chambers and Eleanor Scott were all on the bookshelf, along with many other books. I wasn’t a gregarious boy and spent many hours reading through my parent’s books. Books read at an early age tend to stick better than those read later; this was the case. Not only the ghost stories but books like Gone With The Wind which I read by the age of 11 and still can remember passages verbatim. Similarly, How Green Was My Valley. But the ghost stories, especially M.R. James, were just incredible. As a teen, I read wider and wider in the genre – you name it, I read it. In the 50’s and 60’s there was a lot of American stuff about, great times. As I got older and collected anthologies, I got more and more annoyed that they reprinted the same old stories. I won’t even tell you which ones; look for yourself at any selection of anthologies from the time and see how often certain tales appeared. This was true right up to the 1970’s.

HUGH: It seemed to me very bad that you should be expected to pay full price for a book of whose contents you might already have at least 50 per cent, so around 1970 I got in contact with Peter Haining, whose books I thoroughly enjoyed and wrote to say so. I also asked about how you got an anthology published. I still have a copy of the letter I sent; I must have sounded a wally. But Peter was kindness itself, and told me how to do it. I pay tribute to Peter here, who died last year. We were in contact for 37 years, irregular but always ready to swap books or help with stories. He was a giant in this field and without him, you wouldn’t be even reading this as I wouldn’t have ever published a book. My first book, A Tide of Terror was accepted by W.H. Allen in 1971 and came out in ’72. They did all 11 of my books over the years; without them I wouldn’t be here either. They no longer exist, sadly; they became the basis of Virgin Publishing. What I did was use stories that had been out of print for years. It sounds simple but not many anthologists were ready to follow this line. I mention the likes of R.C. Bull, Herbert Van Thal (once or twice), Sam Moskowitz, Everett Bleiler and Edward Wagenknecht, as editors whose work I aspired to reach the quality of, if I could.

HUGH: What I did was use something called the Metropolitan Joint Fiction Reserve. This is a system (I hope it still exists) where all the libraries in Greater London can call on the others to loan rare books. I did hours of research to find titles of books and then put in reserve cards with my local library. They had an amazing success, perhaps about 75-80% of requests found. Again, without my local library and the MJFR I wouldn’t be here. You could not buy resource materials like this. I must have reserved (between 1969 and 1985) about 5,000 books, mainly short stories. And of course, this was a fishing expedition; only a very small fraction of those located yielded anything worthwhile. But it meant I was building up a stockpile of old stories, all of good quality, that had never been reprinted since the Victorian era. All this amazing ghost and horror stuff had just sat there for a century while the bulk of the editors in the field had just not bothered to look for them. Nice for me! But very bad for horror enthusiast who had spent years (and money) buying books where they already possessed sometimes 50% of the contents.

HUGH: Not so much stories, as authors. I brought back into print for the first time writers like A.C Benson, Eleanor Scott, Bernard Capes and Frederick Cowles. They had all written books of ghost stories, totally ignored since they first appeared. I was proudest of all at putting into book form for the first time a ghost story by M.R. James, ‘The Experiment.’ This was by any reckoning, a major find; I was very lucky that nobody else had spotted it in over 45 years.

If anyone wants to find out more about my work, I recommend, if you can find it, ‘Forgotten Ghosts’ published by the Ash Tree press in 1996. It contains a long article by Mike Ashley about my books and says it all better than I can, and saves me a lot of typing!

HUGH: Many of the tales are forgotten about because they are not good enough. Books go out of print and are forgotten. Have a look at how quickly books are remaindered now; it has always been the way. ‘Loved and cherished’ is a strange way of putting it! Publishers now tend to treat short stories like unwanted relatives. There is a strange M.C. Escher logic in what I used to be told by some publishers. Why don’t you want to publish short stories, I would ask. Because nobody buys them. But, I would splutter, they don’t buy them because you don’t publish them. Umm, that would be...the answer, So nobody buys them which means nobody publishes them. But as nobody publishes them, nobody buys them. And as nobody buys them.........

Another answer to this question is that stories are forgotten about because nobody is prepared to go looking for them. Which sounds rather arrogant on my part, but still true.

HUGH: No. I agree with Dirty Harry: ‘a man should know his limitations.’ I couldn’t summon an original though for a story if I tried. Two points: it’s not necessary, for instance to be a perfect interior decorator to recognise when someone has hung the wallpaper badly. I can tell a bad story very easily. You have to if you edit. And there are many writers around who never followed Dirty Harry’s advice. No, I’m not going to name any. How daft do you think I am?

HUGH: The last truly compiled anthologies would be the single author collections I did for the Ash Tree Press between 1996 and 2002. The last anthology compiled from separate authors is (depressingly, I now realise) 17 years ago: Gaslit Nightmares 2. Many reasons: I don’t have the same enthusiasm as I did 40 years ago. I don’t have the time. I would find it very hard to keep up with what’s in print now which would make claims about stories being undiscovered for 100 years a bit dangerous. And I’ve done my share, made a small name for myself in this small field and I don’t have anything to prove anymore. Dover Books in America are reprinting some of my old books which is nice (and easy!)

HUGH: Up to a point. I have very limited time for reading for myself. (I’m a self-employed proof reader.) I know the Pan books; I’ve got a complete set like all the horror fans from the 1960’s. But all told, I’m rather out of touch, though I do get to proofread fantasy and horror as part of my work. And I’m still in contact with a lot of people who are writing now. I read to suit myself and my favourite writers outside the genre include John Mortimer, Humphrey Lyttleton, Jon Pilger, Irvine Welsh. Favourtie horror writers now? Ramsey Campbell, Don Tumasonis, David Schow. Bit of a mixed bag.

HUGH: Not much if I can help it. I like a quiet life. I’m no raver nor am I a frequent conventioneer (which may explain why not many people know about me these days). But I like films, music, reading (see above). I’ve made some good friends in this genre, like Mike Ashley, Steve Jones, Richard Dalby, the late Peter Haining.

My son Richard writes horror films! How’s that for inherited talent?

My books have given me a whisper of immortality. IN the same way that I delved into forgotten stories, perhaps in 100 years (if we are still here) some researcher might stumble across one of my books. That’s a splendid idea to keep in mind when you feel cheesed off, old, short of cash, unloved and unwanted.

I’m a lucky man.

Thanks for listening. If any of you have any of my books, then thank you, all of you.