The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic. From 2014 through 2017, he served as chairman of the board of trustees of the leading UK center-right think tank, Policy Exchange. In 2001-2002, he served as speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush; in 2007-2008, as senior adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaigns. Frum is the author of ten books, most recently Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (the putative topic of our conversation).  The memoir of his service in the George W. Bush administration, The Right Man, was a New York Times bestseller, as was his 2018 book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. He and his wife Danielle Crittenden Frum live in Washington DC and Wellington, Ontario, where we met lake-side, at The Drake Devonshire, buffeted by the breeze, serenaded by the surf. We talk, among other things, about Trumpocalypse (HarperCollins, 2020); Shakespeare and Byron; crocodiles and alligators; Trump, of course; marriage; how Twitter affects the writing of a book; adolescence and childhood; Chomsky and George Washington; America the Good versus America the Bad; American exceptionalism; finding the right person; and the choice between changing the world and changing yourself.

Peter Florence is a British festival director,​​ notable for founding the Hay Festival with his​ parents, Norman​ and Rhoda Florence​. FYI t​he first festival ​was financed with winnings from a poker game. Peter​ ​was educated at Ipswich School, Jesus College, Cambridge, and the University of Paris and has an MA in Modern and Medieval Literatures. He holds honorary doctorates from ​four universities​. ​He has replicated the success of Hay in numerous cities around the world, launching similar festivals in Mantua, Segovia, the Alhambra Palace, Cartagena, Nairobi, Zacatecas, Thiruvananthapuram, Dhaka, Xalapa, Belfast and Paraty. He is the co-editor of the Oxtales and Oxtravels anthologies with Mark Ellingham of Profile Books, in partnership with Oxfam​ ​and has written for ​the​ Index on Censorship​, The Guardian​, The Telegraph​, The Spectator​ and numerous other publications.​ ​"​Florence chaired the jury of the 2019 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and controversially defied the foundation’s 1993-established rules to award the prize to two authors. Bernardine Evaristo - the first black woman to be awarded the prize - shared the prize with Margaret Atwood​." ( unfortunately, I failed to ask him about this). ​ ​He and his wife Becky Shaw have four sons. They live in Herefordshire. Peter was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to Arts and Culture​ and​ a CBE in 2018 for services to Literature and Charity​.   We met via Zoom to talk, among other things, about Hay's recent on-line, Covid-driven 2020 event and how Peter plans to capitalize on its enormous success, about what special ingredients are required to put on good festivals and interesting sessions, about the English language, party animals, translation, what makes Peter happy, and the titles of his favourite recent reads.

Mark Bourrie is a Canadian lawyer, blogger, journalist, author, historian, and lecturer. His work has appeared in many Canadian magazines and newspapers. In 2020, his book  Bushrunner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson, won the final RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction.    Known widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples.” "Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland—thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions. His venture as an Arctic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation". I talked with Mark over the phone about the genesis of his book, and about Radisson and his life with capitalism, the Mohawk, the British and the French.

Ian Wilson was chief Librarian and Archivist of Canada from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this as National Archivist, with Roch Carrier the then National Librarian, he developed and led the process to merge the National Archives and National Library into a unified institution. "His distinguished career has included archival and information management, university teaching and government service." In addition, he has published extensively on history, archives, heritage, and information management and has lectured both in Canada and abroad.      "Born in Montreal, Quebec, he attended the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean and obtained a master's degree from Queen's University in 1974. He began his career at Queen's University Archives, later becoming Saskatchewan's Provincial Archivist and Chairman of the Saskatchewan Heritage Advisory Board. He was appointed Archivist of Ontario in 1986, a position he held until 1999." ​ He chaired the Consultative Group on Canadian Archives on behalf of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The Group's report, Canadian Archives - generally known as the "Wilson Report" - published in 1980 - has been described as "a milestone in the history of archival development in Canada."​ He is currently a consultant. ​   I met with Ian at his home in Ottawa to talk about how the merger between Library and Archives is going, about Canada's great Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty and Canada and its Provinces his monumental, under-appreciated nation-building publishing project, and about the essential role Library and Archives Canada plays, or doesn't play, in cultivating a distinctive national Canadian identity.

Larry Grobel is the author of more than 25 books - including Conversations with Capote (which received a PEN Special Achievement award), and Talking with Michener. He has been a freelance writer for more than 40 years, having written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Movieline and many other publications. He is also a renowned interviewer, having conducted and written numerous iconic Playboy magazine interviews over the years. The magazine called him “the interviewer’s interviewer” after his interview with Marlon Brando for its 25th anniversary issue.  We met via Zoom to talk about his superb book The Art of the Interview (2004) and its companion volume Endangered Species: Writers Talk about their Craft, their Visions, their Lives. Its foreword calls Larry "prepared, adaptable, and graced with the intelligence needed to shoot the breeze and elicit intriguing responses, gossip and wisdom.  Joyce Carol Oates has called him “the Mozart of interviewers” and J.P. Donleavy has called him “the most intelligent interviewer in the United States.”  He currently teaches seminars on The Art of the Interview at UCLA.   

Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. His fields of study are British history, intellectual history and the history of the book. He was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, and has served as the president of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. His book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, won the Jacques Barzun Prize , the Longman History Book of the Year Prize and the British Council Prize. Other books include The Literary Churchill, A Companion to the History of the Book, and British Literary Publishing Houses 1820-1965. His most recent work is as co-editor with Mary Hammond, of the four volume Edinburgh History of Reading.  Jonathan is co-editor of Book History, which won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals award for the Best New Journal of 1999.  We met via Zoom to talk about his book Reader's Liberation, a fascinating narrative history of independent skeptical reading, from antiquity to present. Topics covered include defending the humanities, free expression and leaky censorship, the importance of reader reception, reading and revolution, making the Bible accessible in everyday English, the First Amendment, Great Books programs and common conversation, the disaster of 'Common Core,' Louise Rosenblatt, Clifton Fadiman and The Book of the Month Club. the positive influence of Oprah Winfrey, the drive toward literacy in Black America, Hugh Hefner and the Playboy interviews, objective versus partisan media, "native" advertising and credibility, docile students and cancel culture. 

Reni Eddo-Lodge, is a London based, award winning author and journalist. Her writing focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She's the author of the Jhalak Prize winning, bestselling Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, published by Bloomsbury, and host of a podcast series called About Race. Why I'm no Longer Talking topped a public poll of twenty books shortlisted in 2018 by the UK Booksellers Association as the most influential book written by a woman We met at the Blue Met Literary Festival in Montreal (she was here to accept the Words to Change Prize, awarded to "the writer of a literary work that upholds the values of intercultural understanding and social inclusion", to talk about her book, about white people talking about racism, and about the prevalence and effects of systematic, structural racism in England and around the world. 

Leslie Weir was the University Librarian at the University of Ottawa from 2003 to 2018. She became Librarian and Archivist of Canada in August, 2019. Ms. Weir is the first woman to hold this position since the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada were merged to form Library and Archives Canada in 2004. She was born and raised in Montreal, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Canadian History from Concordia University in 1976 and a Masters in Library Science from McGill University in 1979. She joined the University of Ottawa in 1992. During her tenure as University Librarian, she founded the School of Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts where she was also a Professor.  She was a member of the Board of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), from its inception until 2009 and again from 2011 to 2015. She served as President of Canadiana.org between 2012 and 2016 where she oversaw the introduction of the Heritage Project to digitize and make openly accessible some 60 million heritage archival images. Ms. Weir was also president of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries from 2007 to 2009 and president of the Ontario Library Association in 2017.   We met in her high-ceilinged offices at 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa to talk about, among other things, the merging of Library and Archives, the mandate of LAC, federal government departmental libraries, the Library of Parliament, budgets, acquisitions, fundraising and the new LAC Foundation, author archives, Michael Ondaatje, exhibitions, the new LAC building, partnerships, Access to Information requests, the white diamond building, legal deposit, the Internet, Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty, gold claims, book collecting culture, Pierre Berton, Kay Lamb, and Winston Churchill.

Of course Dublin is where the biggest Bloomsday Festival takes place each on June 16th, with celebrations set in many of the "original sites" sited in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. But did you know that the second biggest celebration in the world takes place every year in Montreal? It's grown quickly over the past four or five years, and is now a five-day affair. Dave Schurman is the president of the Festival Bloomsday Montreal. Along with his wife Judith and a team of enthusiastic volunteers, they've created "a celebration of the words and wit of Joyce, and other Irish literary lions," that features not only writers, but also musicians and actors and academics. It's quite an event.  I talk with Dave about his experience establishing Bloomsday in Montreal, and pick his brain for advice about setting up similar events around the world.   

Paul Litt is a historian of public life in late twentieth-century Canada. His research explores the cultural workings of modern Canadian mass democracy focusing on the media, the politics of image, tourism, the politicization of identities, and nationalism.  He is currently a Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.  We met in his office to talk about 20th century Canadian government book publishing policy, specifically about Canadian cultural identity and nationalism, literature, copyright, new versus old media, documentary film, broadcasting, the Massey Commission, high versus mass culture, university funding, text books, the National Library, the Canada Council, Ryerson Press, national unity, and cultural industry policy.