Publisher's Synopsis
A no-holds-barred, year-long account by Vivian Ridler (Printer to the University, Oxford 1958-78) of a crucial period at Oxford University Press in 1970-71, when it was beset by financial difficulties, union trouble, management infighting, and rapid technological change that would ultimately spell the end of a 400-year tradition of book manufacture at the Press that culminated in the closure of the Printing House a decade after Ridler's retirement. As a man of wide interests, he meets leading figures such as Philip Larkin, Michael Holroyd and Sir Geoffrey Keynes from the world of books, historians Alan Bullock and Robert Blake, typographers Brooke Crutchley and Berthold Wolpe, and heads of Oxford colleges and the Bodleian. With an extensive introduction and footnotes.
