Publishers, like farmers, are notorious grumblers, forever forecasting doom and despair and the imminent collapse of the world as they have known it. Despite affectations of donnish absent-mindedness and gentlemanly amateurism, they are also, more often than not, shrewd and hard-headed businessmen, adept at pulling strings in high places. All these qualities were much in evidence during the War, when publishers found themselves in the half-enviable, half-hopeless position of being unable to meet a seemingly insatiable demand for books.

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