An appointment at Oxford University Press

On Tuesday last week, Miang and I made a special journey to Oxford. My first experience of this place was as a new graduate student in 1970 as shown in the matriculation picture attached. The latest photo shows that I have aged somewhat.

The primary reason for my visit was to call on Oxford University Press, who had, for some inexplicable reason, failed to meet the June publication date for my book. But it was also a chance to catch up with Oxford friends Milo and Irina Shott, and with previous graduate students, Daniel Corbett, Sasha Khrapitchev and Ed Crossland, all of whom are postdoctoral fellows at Oxford University. The photo shows Daniel, Sasha and Ed at lunch in the Lamb and Flag pub in St Giles. Afterwards, Daniel and Sasha joined Miang and me for a walk back across the University Parks to Wolfson College where both are Research Fellows. This was a walk I had done hundreds of times when I was a graduate student and then Junior Research Fellow, at Wolfson, from 1970 to 1974. Little had changed.

My copy-edited book files were returned to OUP for the generation of proofs, back on 15 March. These days, authors like me do all the work that used to be carried out by typesetters, by writing our book in a source code language known as LaTeX, using a style file that automatically generates exactly the layout required by the publisher. All equations are beautifully set, diagrams placed correctly, and even the publishers logo appears in the right place. For the publisher to produce proofs simply involves taking the LaTeX sources files and eps diagram files and running them through a standard programme, a process requiring possibly ten seconds.

Why then had I received no proofs by July 5, the date of my departure from New Zealand, and one month after publication date? The answer lies in "widow and orphan lines". These are the lines of text that appear all alone on a new page and which, by a manual instruction in the source code, can be manipulated to join their companions. That is the final step, and it is one I delegated to OUP, since I believed that this simple step deserved some publisher input. In all, I estimated widow and orphan line fixing to be maybe one or two hours work. What I had not counted on were the exceptional qualities of the the production manager allocated to my book, a man whose name I must necessarily protect and one who has since mysteriously "left the employ of the Press". This fellow was, to my misfortune, exceptionally polite and pleasant in his communications, but kept informing me of unforeseen problems which were on the cusp of solution, and which would result in proofs being sent within the week. After about six weeks I became suspicious. Then began a flurry of enquiries, which eventually involved more senior staff plumbing the black hole into which my book had apparently fallen. The subsequent demise of my production manager appeared to be coincident on my saying "I am coming to the UK to sort this matter out".

Of course you, dear reader, will realise that there were other reasons for my coming to the UK. But I hope you will forgive my crime in not making clear these other reasons to the fine people in Great Clarendon Street, the home of the world's greatest publishing house, the source of definitive dictionaries, Bibles, "The Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Microscopy", and who knows, maybe one day "Translational Dynamics and Magnetic Resonance".

I have no clear idea why I might be smiling in the photograph. Perhaps it is a smile of relief, having met the new production manager, a highly competent and pleasant young woman called Emma, whose apologies knew no bounds, and who promised to have me my proofs within 24 hours. Indeed, I have now seen them. They are exceedingly pretty, and the book will be now published, 3 months late, in September.