Ever since writing this article on collecting teapots, for my friend Tony Martins, I’ve been thinking about my great uncle Sir Arthur Church. I had no idea he was such a wheel in collecting circles, back at the turn of the 20th century. All I knew was that he’d discovered a colour. A bright red, water-soluble pigment called Turacin (found in the feathers of West African birds known as Turacos),

had a rock named after him (a mineral actually, called Churchite), and wrote some books on food

Turns out he was among the first to apply science to the practice of collecting - subjecting materials to measurements that verified things like age and molecular structure. He was also an expert on paint chemistry and conservation. Even dabbled in landscapes himself.

Some say he was responsible for transforming collecting from just a hobby “a mere acquisitiveness,” into a rigorous scientific discipline, by applying chemical analysis to the preservation and authentication of art. As a collector himself, of all sorts of things (from ceramics to botanical drawings, precious stones to Japanese sword-handles) he believed that those of us who practice are public benefactors responsible for preserving our property for the benefit of others - artists and archaeologists and historians for example.

He’s credited with being a pioneer in preventative conservation practices, advising the Ashmolean Museum early on in 1896 to moderate light, temperature, and humidity in its galleries in order to protect its paintings. His book The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890) became an essential guide for identifying stable pigments versus those prone to fading - this fundamentally changed how collections were managed and maintained. Restoration Expertise? He was called upon to restore the Maclise frescoes at the Palace of Westminster, during which he proved that airborne sulphuric acid from smoke was the primary cause of their decay. Technical Curatorship? While honorary curator at the Corinium Museum he conducted detailed chemical analyses of Roman wall pigments.

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In short, what he was, was one of those quite common indefatigable Victorian hyper achiever-types who put everyone else (including ancestors) to shame with the amount of work they did. Then again, he didn’t have any kids - that I’m aware of.

Regardless, I’m proud to be related to him, even if I had nothing to do with it. Despite the fact that everything chemistry makes me nauseous (high-school hangover), it’s pretty clear that I inherited a collecting gene from him.

Which brings us to the first question I asked bookseller Dan Morgan during a recent conversation I had with him in Prague: could this kind of inheritance have played a role in his life?

Dan and I sat down (for the second time) in his cool, quiet, secluded bookshop last month to discuss his transformation from modernist book design collector to bookseller.

It’s one collector interview in a series I hope to expand over the coming months (for some already in the can, try Mark Samuels Lasner and Mark Andrews).

Collecting, and studying what you’ve collected, adds a great deal not only to the understanding of one’s own life, but also, I’d say, to one’s heritage. It’s patriotic! Collectors can help their fellow citizens to learn about communal history. Collectors do the job that Librarians and Archivists should be doing but can’t, in many cases, due to lack of funds. Given this, cultivating and celebrating collectors is the least governments and libraries should do. I’ll see what I can do to get Canada’s chief librarian (and the U.S.’s and U.K.’s) to address this with me ahead of the new National Library and Archive building opening scheduled for later this year. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy listening to Dan’s story - his love affairs with an extraordinary Czech woman, collecting, and Czech Modernist book design.

Judging from Stephen Miller’s Twitter feed, a ton of immigrants living in the United States are dangerous criminals who need to be incarcerated, exterminated or, at the very least, deported. His is a spigot of malice that drops toilet bowls full of racist hatred over the heads of “foreigners;” Miller’s tweets are pulling the same carts that Nazi-owned newspapers did years ago in Germany, during the 20s and 30s, spreading the manure of anti-Semitism. This comparison came to me a month ago or so when I was in Dresden perusing the local flea market

scene.

In reality, of course, the vast majority of immigrants in the U.S. are exemplary, law-abiding, citizens (more so than the general population) who contribute a great deal to the country’s well-being. Misrepresenting them as enemies of the state -dehumanizing them, smearing them - is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews, leading up to the gas chambers. In fact it comes straight from the National Socialist playbook. Where’s proof of this demonizing and scapegoating? In Nazi newspapers, which is exactly what, given my electric fascination for print culture, I figured I should go after while I was in Dresden. Nothing at the flea markets unfortunately (I did however score this:

a week or two later in Vienna. Not Nazi propaganda obviously. The opposite in fact. The year is 1933. The paper was shut down in 1934) but I did get lucky at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, spending a good morning there in the basement scouring

the library.

As it happens, researchers at the Institute, notably Christoph Hanzig, have been digitizing and analysing Der Freiheitskampf, a Dresden-based Nazi daily, for the better part of a decade. Christoph is a ‘font’ of knowledge when it comes to Nazis manipulating the news.

I spoke with him about Miller, and Nazi print propaganda techniques, a couple of weeks ago via Zoom.

The first time out we talked about the miracles he worked at Waterstones. Then we looked at his early plans for Barnes & Noble. Now James Daunt and I discuss the future: where his bookstore chains are headed, when B&N is going public, how employee pay scales have changed, why entrepreneurship enlivens everything, when he plans to retire and what he’s going to do with himself.

Plus we get even more personal: how does a busy guy like James combat loneliness, why are so many billionaires pedophiles, what are the secrets to long a marriage, and happiness; what constitutes a life well lived, what matters most?

Tune in for some profundity.

Bloomsbury Publishing has been in business for almost forty years. Last year it earned £361.0 million. Over the past five years it’s taken in more than £1.4 Billion. It’s one of, if not the most successful publishing ventures of the past century. How does this work? I asked Founder and Chief Executive Nigel Newton.

Here we talk about, among other things, Frank Newton — Nigel’s prospecting, race car-driving grandfather; about Peter, his wine-making father; about book publishing and stock picking; the acquisition A&C Black; The Garrick Club; ‘romantasy’ and Sarah J. Maas; Liz Calder; floatation in 1994; aspiring to be mid-sized; Christopher Little; J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter being a fluke; Amazon observing territorial copyright; AI licensing agreements as unforeseen backlist windfalls; suing AI companies; ideal publishing companies; surviving medically; Emotional Intelligence; The History of Bloomsbury Publishing coming out in April, 2027 to celebrate 40th years in business; Anthony Blonde’s book - not The Truth about Publishing. It’s either The Publishing Game (1971) or The Book Book (1983) (for sure I own at least one of these, and I’m going to say, almost 100%, it’s signed); foreign rights; and how to lead a happy, fulfilling life.

Publishing books in Canada is a punishing, risky business. Even if your little enterprise makes it through, surviving years of ups and downs, in the end nobody will buy it. Not even the Americans (who have bought everything else in Canada it seems), because viability is tied to Canadian government-approved domestic list-specific grants. Pretty bleak the whole thing.

Not to say that being a publisher in Canada isn’t a damned good time, as Scott McIntyre’s lively new memoir A Precarious Endeavour ( not the be confused with The Perilous Trade - published fittingly or not by PRH) proves. It’s just that you don’t get rich, at least financially.

I spoke with him about it.

It’s a fun, far from dismal, albeit slightly honeyed romp through the past 50 years of the book business in Canada featuring the life and times of West coast publishing house Douglas & McIntyre, one that McIntyre co-founded in 1970 with Jim Douglas. A parade of colourful Canadian literary and political characters boogies through the book

I enjoyed talking with Scott about them, and about, among other things, animals being used as publisher logos, glaring contradictions; publishing being the art of the possible; Canada’s West Coast vibe; Alfred Knopf; the Barbarian Press; Scott’s love of West Coast indigenous art; his house; his struggles with fellow publisher Anna Porter to sign broadcaster Jack Webster and journalist Allan Fotheringham’s books; about the influence, skill-set and anger of Jack McClelland - arguably Canada’s greatest book publisher; about best-selling author/historian Peter C. Newman and sailing; about the superb quality of many of D&M’s books andnot going to Scott’s house to see them; about Frankfurt; and about the atrocity of McClelland and Stewart’s backlist - one of Canadian culture’s undisputed treasures - falling into foreign hands (Penguin Random House’s) under dubious circumstances; about the recently deceased Elaine Dewar getting it wrong (according to Scott) in her fascinating book The Handover on the topic ( I interviewed her at the time. Listen here. I’m not so sure she got it wrong. Nor is Marc Côté) and finally, about English Canadians generally, and bureaucrats, specifically, not giving a s**t about their own culture.

On that note, I hope you’ll take as much pleasure listening to Scott as I did.

Please stay tuned. Coming up very shortly (assuming it gets through the censors) my Biblio File podcast conversation with Nigel Newton the great British-American publisher who discovered J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter.

Interesting mix of shyness and confidence is Ken Whyte. You’ll hear both assert themselves during this conversation. Together they explain his hugely successful career as an editor in Canada over the past 40 years, if you ask me.

Ken started editing at Alberta Report magazine during the eighties, then got the job, in 1994, as editor of Saturday Night magazine, one of the oldest and most venerated in the country. In 1998 he was appointed E

ditor in Chief of Conrad Black’s start-up newspaper The National Post and in 2005 took over as Editor and Publisher of Maclean’s, Canada’s all-time most interesting magazine. In 2017 he launched Sutherland House Books. In the Spring of 2025 it acquired Fitzhenry and Whiteside. And last month Ken made it onto The Biblio File.

We talk briefly about the acquisition, take a look at storytelling, descend into despair, talk our way back from the void, and then finally dig into the meat: tearing away at the differences between editing a magazine and editing a book.

Ira Wells' new book, On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, was officially released in the U.S. today, June 3, 2025, by Biblioasis. It’s a succinct, well-written, beautifully aphoristic examination of a rising trend to censor books in North America.

Wells is a rising assistant professor of literature at the University of Toronto. On Book Banning is a reaction, specifically, to books being attacked not just by fundamentalists in Florida and but also by out-of-control woke activists in Ontario, and how both extremes are using the same weak excuse to get books out of school libraries: claiming that ‘our innocent children are being harmed!’ The book critiques what Wells identifies as a growing "censorship consensus" among conservatives and progressives, under which both sides conceive of literature as a battleground where ideological agendas are at war, rather than what it should be: a refuge for open inquiry and artistic expression. Wells traces the impulse to censor literature from ancient Rome, through Milton and Mill, to modern-day class-rooms where parents are currently fighting to suppress both LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive content, and material that’s deemed “obscene.”

Drawing on personal experience participating in an audit at his children’s school library, Wells reflects on how such practices thwart learning, and push ignorance over dialogue. He contends that the censorship trend is undermining democratic values such as free expression and intellectual growth.

We talk about all of this, and Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia to boot. (I left in a couple of minutes at the end where Ira flips the switch/holds the mic, and asks a few questions about what I’ve been up to).

Roberto Banchik-Rothschild, to use his full, official Mexican name, is the CEO of Penguin Random House ( PRH) Grupo Editorial in Mexico. He also leads the company’s publishing activities in Central America, and is responsible for the Hispanic market in the U.S.

He is a charming man, a book-lover who believes that publishing has the power to change society, and people’s lives, for the better; in its noble capacities. He’s also a company man, who, here, ably parries the piñata-full of criticisms I crack open above PRH during the course of this conversation.

I interviewed Roberto in a sound-studio at his offices in Mexico City.

For some reason I had the high-profile 2022 anti-trust case involving Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster on my mind when I walked in. It might have had something to do with the fact that I’d just read these two damning articles, one by Elle Griffin, the other by Ken Whyte.

I voice some of the concerns they raise about today’s publishing climate, and the Big 5, during my conversation with Roberto, among them: lack of competition; collusion, greed, wokeness, greatness, private interest and public service, monopsony, diversity. We also talk about the b*******s of good, alienated mid-range straight, white male authors; watered-down backlists; identity politics, sour grapes, meat-lovers, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to read.

As Roberto has it, Mexican publishing floats far above most of the mess painted by Griffin and Whyte.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, given how everything, not just publishing, seems to be going pear-shaped in the land of liberty these days.

David Moscrop is a political theorist and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He studies democratic deliberation, political decision-making, and digital media, and is a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and a writer for Maclean's Magazine He also provides regular political commentary for television and radio. His first book Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones was published by Goose Lane Editions in March 2019. 

We met at the University of Ottawa to discuss his book, just in time for Canada's 2019 Federal election. Among other things we talk about the story behind the book, making smart voting decisions, Twitter, literary agent Chris Bucci, CBC Ideas; good, rational, autonomous thinking; diverse, trusted news sources; emotional biases, negative political advertising, threats to democracy, partisanship, SNC Lavalin, Jody Wilson Raybould, the importance of investing time in order to understanding politics, bots, good citizenship, voting on principle versus strategically, party discipline, and adopting proportional representation.

And for you non-political types: it's a lot more interesting than this makes it sound. 

​B. Traven's​ novels and stories​ have sold m​ore than ​3​0 million copies​ over the past century, in more than 30 languages​ worldwide. He was Einstein's favourite novelist. Der Spiegel ranks his The Death Ship as the third greatest German novel ever written (okay in the past 100 years), after Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Kafka's The Castle; and yet, despite this, few today, in the English speaking world at least, have heard of him. It's only thanks to the movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, based on one of his stories, that he's known here at all. Why is this?

Perhaps because no-one knows with absolute certainty who Traven was. No-one is 100% sure of his true identity.

Timothy Heyman CBE is 99% sure. We talk here about his hypothesis, plus the tasks he's set himself to re-establish Traven's reputation and re-gain an audience for his works.

Heyman, a considerable person in his own right, is co-manager (recently promoted to managing director) of the B. Traven Estate along with his wife (who is proprietor), Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman​, Traven's stepdaughter.

I met Tim up in the couple's beautiful apartment overlooking Mexico City to talk about what he's achieved to date with Traven's literary archive, and, again, who he thinks Traven really was. We were surrounded by a library of books written by the mystery man, accompanied by a glorious panoramic view of the city.

After our conversation we went upstairs to a special room which holds the archive - the place where Tim occupies himself with the business of legacy building.