A Night at the V&A

A month or so ago, the top story on the Bookseller’s home page featured a glass of red wine and a headline announcing that the publishing industry was the UK’s ‘booziest’ business. When the story broke, it rapidly turned into a legendary anecdote, a fact proudly recounted to grinning colleagues clamouring around the tables at the Distillers pub after work.

So far, the various events I’ve attended throughout my short career in publishing have done nothing to disprove this.

The HarperCollins summer author party was held last night at the V&A and I was lucky enough to be invited along. Ordinarily, attendance is restricted to more senior HC members – however, last week the organizers recruited a group of top notch badge-distributors and I made the cut. I’d never been to the V&A before, and was blown away by the imposing eloquence of the Victorian architecture: the sleek marble pillars, the lofty domed roof and the extravagant glass sculpture that dangled down from the ceiling like the tongue of a trans-dimensional being out of Lovecraft. To a native Californian, epic architecture like this excites the imagination easily.

Stationed at the S-Z badge table, my colleagues and I immediately set to work: first provisioning ourselves with glasses of champagne, and then becoming friends with the guys who top up empty glasses. From where we stood, we had an excellent view of the straggling paparazzi slumped outside the entrance with their giant cameras. Whenever their flashes went off, my eyes automatically lowered down to the S-Z badges hunting out potential targets for such media adoration. Notable on our table were Nigel Slater, Penny Smith, Ariane Sherine, Francis Wheen, etc. The lucky crew manning the E table were treated to one of the biggest entrances of the night – Chris Evans, who parked his £200k Ferrari on the street outside and bounded up the stairs bathed in the photographers’ flashes.

Badge duty complete, it was high time to walk through the maelstrom of caterers, past the statues in a gallery hall, to mingle with the crowd outside in the garden. The atmosphere was identical to what you imagine a London publishing party would be like before you get into the industry: set against a learned backdrop of ancient museum walls enclosing a bubbling pond, I spent my time drifting through a gathering of people dressed along a fashion spectrum ranging from quirky professors to slick venture capitalists. The first author I spoke to was Daniel Clay, whose book Swap we are publishing early next year. He was an exceptionally nice guy and I nearly persuaded him to write a piece for this very blog! In turn I chatted to a handful of authors which included the historian Dan Snow — whose brain I wracked for secret London historical finds.

Mingling my way through the constellations of book industry people I managed to talk to a fascinating array of authors and publishers. Being a publishing event, the only useful metric for measuring the arc of the evening was the type of drink that was in your hand. The event was divided not into hours, but into eras filled by different drinks, so you could identify where you were by what you were drinking. In retrospect, the sudden appearance of deserts and the fact that I was shunted onto a strange red cocktail because all the beers had vanished should have been an indication that the night was winding down. However, I was still surprised and a bit disappointed when they finally kicked us out of the V&A because it meant that a great night had come to a close.

Well, almost.

It being a publishing event, a few bold and courageous ringleaders directed the stragglers to a nearby pub where the night was winded down in proper publishing fashion. One short jog to catch the last tube later and I was in bed – dreaming of the next fabulous boozy publishing event.