• • • Savoy's History Officially Archived

The papers of David Britton and Michael Butterworth—those that have survived sixty years of home and office relocations, as well as the intrusive depredations of the Greater Manchester Police—have been transferred to the nation's libraries for safekeeping.

Savoy at the Bodleian

On the 11th September 2019 the David Britton Archive was deposited at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Included in the deposit are the following:

Access to this archive starts in 2020. Please contact the Library for details.

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Savoy at the MMU Special Collections Library

In May 2017 the Michael Butterworth Archive was deposited at Manchester Metropolitan University's Special Collection Library, Manchester. Included in this deposit are the following:

For access to this archive please contact the Library for details.

www.specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk

Forthcoming in 2020 (Britton and Butterworth aren't finished yet!)

Old Death, Britton's new Lord Horror novel, was completed in September 2019, containing thirty full-colour illustrations by Kris Guidio. Publication announcement to follow.

Fenella Fielding's final readings for Savoy are nearing completion. A double CD will contain readings from Michael Moorcock's novels An Alien Heat and Legends From the End of Time, and 'Love', Moorcock's moving elegy to Mervyn and Maeve Peake. Release details to follow.

Kris Guidio and Lux Interior, photographed by Nick Knox, Paris, 1982.

Forthcoming in 2021 or beyond

Particularly significant for Savoy will be the publication of James Cawthorn's adaptation of Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer. Before his death in 2008 Jim finished the comic-strip sketches for this intended work. He was unable to complete the project, but these marvellous visualisations show that a definitive adaptation of Stormbringer was very nearly achieved. Its publication completes the story of Savoy with a remarkable symmetry, recalling that our first publication back in 1976 was an adaptation of Stormbringer, also by Jim. Running to 250-plus pages Stormbringer will be published by Savoy in conjunction with John Davey/Jayde Design—at the appropriate moment. Watch this space.

• • • James Cawthorn: The Man and His Art

As promised last year, James Cawthorn: The Man and His Art, forthcoming in a month or so from JaydeDesign, is the next best thing to a new Savoy title: a book commemorating the life and work of superlative Savoy artist and great friend, James Cawthorn.

The book is written and co-compiled by Jim's devoted sister, Maureen Cawthorn Bell, whose words are bracketed by an affectionate foreword from Alan Moore and a heartfelt afterword by Michael Moorcock, the latter writing about the loss of his mentor and old friend. The difficult task of tracing hundreds of illustrations hidden in decades-old books and journals was undertaken by co-compiler John Davey, editor of Savoy's hefty Michael Moorcock: Into the Media Web, who also oversaw the editorial and production process. What began as a modest memorial from a sister to a brother ended with the accumulation of over 3,000 separate paintings, drawings, designs and sketches, out of which a selection of 800 was made. At 448 pages, this is a much more substantial production than anyone anticipated at the outset.

The name of James Cawthorn (1929–2008) is so strongly associated with Savoy that he became, in a sense, the company mascot. In 1976 the first book we published was his adaptation of Michael Moorcock's novel Stormbringer: a rushed commission by a fledgling publisher, the book nevertheless contained a number of outstanding and evocative full-page illustrations of Elric, all informed by Cawthorn's long association with the character and with his creator, Michael Moorcock. For the next thirty-two years Jim's work continued to grace Savoy's list. Stormbringer was followed by Cawthorn's multi-volume adaptation of Moorcock's Dorian Hawkmoon novels, beginning with The Jewel in the Skull*, and there has been hardly a title we have published, from Sojan to The Exploits of Engelbrecht, Savoy Dreams to Sieg Heil Iconographers, The Legendary Ted Nugent to A Tea Dance at Savoy, that doesn't contain a 'Jim' somewhere inside it.

Jim was, of course, first and foremost associated with Michael Moorcock, a creative partnership of fifty years. He was Michael's best friend and collaborator, and the perfect visualiser for characters such as Elric, Dorian Hawkmoon and the cast of the Dancers at the End of Time novels and stories. Cawthorn's standalone adaptation of The Jewel in the Skull made the pair the UK's first graphic novelists when the book was published by Savoy in 1978.

James Cawthorn: The Man and His Art gathers together all of this work as well as much else distilled from the thousands of illustrations Cawthorn produced over his lifetime. This includes all of the remarkable depictions of scenes and characters from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (the first after Tolkien's own illustrations) produced in 1961; the tireless work for specialist fantasy publications such as Amra, Tarzan Adventures, Burroughsania, the Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Erbania; through to the Counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s with illustrations, reviews and comic strips for New Worlds and Frendz, and T-shirt and stage designs for Hawkwind.

In addition to the artwork, the man is represented with previously unpublished photographs from the set of the 1975 adventure film The Land That Time Forgot (for which Cawthorn and Moorcock wrote the script), as well as family photographs and recollections by friends. Not simply a monograph but a fitting monument to a multifaceted artist and writer, and a loving brother. The only thing missing is Jim himself. All involved in this production would love for him to have seen this book.

You've heard us bang this drum before but we'll never tire of saying it: James Cawthorn and Mervyn Peake were the best British black-and-white fantasy artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Nobody else comes close.

Designed with love and professionalism by John Coulthart.
Advice and enthusiasm from the sidelines by Yours Truly.

RRP: £35. Orders may be placed with publishers Jayde Design:

• Please select your shipping region from the menu below before ordering. • All prices include postage.

UK £35.00 GBP Europe £48.00 GBP Rest of World £65.00 GBP

ISBN: 978-0-9575764-2-1
Publication date: 6th August, 2018
Pagination: 448
Format: Outsized paperback (216 x 279 mm), with 'French' flaps

*Savoy's editions of Stormbringer, The Jewel in the Skull, The Crystal and the Amulet and The Sword and the Runestaff are being reprinted by Titan Books starting winter 2018.

• • • From Our Man in Kent, Washington

Abel Diaz sends his impressions of the latest from David Britton:

"Razor King arrived like some insurgent ambush into my complacent, unguarded mailbox. It is another exceptional entry in an already exceptional body of work, but the chapters that really stand out for me are:

"'The Horror, the Kike and the Cake' for its opening salvo of dark humor that remained the funniest chapter throughout. The introduction of Dolly Lolly, his absurd mission and his candy-planet origins was ingenious, and it breathed new life into the Horror universe. He made for a more interesting foil or sidekick to Lord Horror than La Squab does. In addition, the contrast of Dolly's innocence against the horrid landscape of Auschwitozaliala and his confusion about his purpose for being there was much more enthralling to me than Lord Horror's hubris and pomposity. This was a damn fine beginning that set a terrific tone for the rest of the book.

"'Pipsqueak on the Take' for its sustained, fantastic imagery delivered in that luxurious prose I deeply love. I never suspected there was cosmic horror to be found in popcorn, but now I'm convinced: 'In actual fact, Lolly was in the middle of a field of popcorn, its buttery yellow shells puffing out a spoory vapour that danced with purpose through the air'.

"That passage harkens back to some of the finest, quietly unsettling atmosphere invoked in the first Lord Horror novel. 'He was well accustomed to receiving emissions from space "I speak to, and of, and for, nations; I speak to, and of, and for, nations; I speak to, and of, and for, nations" Lord Horror had concluded that the voice was a kind of countdown, pitched to give the impression of gradually fading. But he was sure it was not a broadcast from earth; it seemed to arise from somewhere beyond Jupiter."

"I savour these strange and haunting moments in these novels. To me, there is something more fundamentally valuable about this writing than the shock and awe that gets all the attention. If these books had been just a collection of racist jokes and offensive antics, I would have quit reading them long ago. I have stayed in love because time and time again, in certain paragraphs and pages hidden here and there amid the chaos, I have found the most incredible examples of cosmic horror, surreal decadence and weird fantasy that I have ever read in my life. That is no exaggeration.

"I also found Chapter 3, 'In the Belly of the Dolly Varden', to be especially interesting as a sort of Weird Wind in the Willows. It set my mind to dreaming about the existence of an entire novel featuring these vicious little badgers, ferrets and rats, plundering the Seven Seas and butchering all that crossed their path. In my imagination, this slim and superlative volume is titled The Pyrate King in Yellow or perhaps The Sea-Wolves of Torenbürgen.

"To my surprise, my favorite character this time around was not Lord Horror. He stood buried in the long, deep shadow cast by Dolly Lolly Pop. This interplanetary traveler was a fantastic creation. He stole every scene he was in, so much so that I admit that I grew impatient waiting for Dolly to return while reading certain chapters. His transformation from confectionary angel to repentant man-eater was phenomenal; it WAS the book for me. And I was so angry when Lord Horror ate that beautiful little bastard that I had to put the book down for several minutes. Like the inspired recreation of the Ononoes before him, Dolly Lolly Pop will stay long in my mind and heart.

"Julien Gracq once wrote, 'What I want from a literary critic 'contribution' to literature and the enrichment it is supposed to bring me, know that I will marry even without a dowry.'
It is in this spirit and according to this philosophy (which I agree with completely) that I have tried to share my thoughts. I know that I'm no Julien Gracq, but this is why it has never been very important to me to champion Savoy as descendants of whatever important dead authors or to debate the morality of writing such books in the first place. (For the record, I am half Ashkenazi Jew but agree absolutely with Wilde that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, and these books are NOT badly written at all.) What I have tried to do (with spectacular failure, I'm sure!) is to communicate what I loved and what spoke to me and what excited me. I feel that I have been privileged to watch something unique and incredible unfold. This is art of the highest quality.

"Let me end by saying:

"Dolly Lolly Pop über alles, meine Freunde!!!"

• • • Razor King published

Cover art by James Cawthorn. Design by John Coulthart.

Razor King is David Britton's seventh novel. His first, Lord Horror, published in 1989, was the last book to be banned in Britain under the Obscene Publications Act. In a defence led by Geoffrey Robertson QC the book was cleared of obscenity in July 1992.

The new novel continues Britton's cycle of Absurdist picaresque narratives, a series replete with scatological routines and outlandish tableaux. Razor King draws shockingly on the Jewish Holocaust, following the transgressive speculative-fiction lineage of JG Ballard and William S Burroughs while embracing the fin de siècle psychedelia of Alfred Jarry and Harry Clarke.

In Razor King two unconnected worlds and genres collide: the Wild West/Westerns, and outer space/planetary adventure. Key influences are the fantastical works of two of Adolf Hitler's favourite novelists: Karl May, a German author whose Western tales include characters such as Old Shatterhand and Winnetou the Warrior; and Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Mars trilogy (A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, The Warlord of Mars) prefigures many of the popular fictional styles—sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy, science fiction—of later decades. Britton brings to the surface the psychotic undercurrents that often fuel these genres to create a phantasmagoria grounded in real historical events.

Continuing a trend begun with La Squab in 2012, Razor King is illustrated throughout by Kris Guidio.

• Razor King — October 2017
• ISBN: 978-0-86130-130-0
• RRP: £20

Contact: Robert Holland — office@savoy.abel.co.uk

• See the Orders page for purchase details.

• • • A Savoyard's meeting with the Lord Mayor

l to r: Clara Casian, Michael Butterworth, the Lord Mayor of Manchester
Carl Austin-Behan. Photo by Jonathan Barlow

Manchester's Lord Mayor, Councillor Carl Austin-Behan, took time to reminisce with Savoy's Michael Butterworth about the city's brush with repression under Police Chief Constable James Anderton (1976–1991). The occasion was a preview for the La Movida exhibition, HOME art complex, April 13th, where Clara Casian's new film about Savoy and censorship, House on the Borderland, is being screened.

The exhibition celebrates the immense upsurge in artistic innovation that occurred in Spain when censorship was abolished following General Franco's death in 1975. Among the counterculturalists of La Movida Madrileña was filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar: "We weren't a generation; we weren't an artistic movement; we weren't a group with a concrete ideology. We were simply a bunch of people that coincided in one of the most explosive moments in the country." Casian's film connects the Savoyards of Manchester with that "bunch of people". Butterworth's recollections for Casian of The Savoy Wars – a twenty-five year battle with the Manchester police that paralleled the Spanish artists' struggle against Franco – are overlaid with Fay Ballard's narrative of her father JG Ballard's creation of an artwork.

The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson's novel of cosmic terror, is the name we gave to Savoy's first retail bookshop, opened in Manchester in 1972 and inspired by Derek 'Bram' Stokes' London-based shop, Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. Casian's film is intended as an intermediate work between her earlier films about Savoy, and a planned feature film. The latter will be co-developed by Feature Expanded, an international programme between HOME Manchester and Lo Schermo Dell'Arte film festival, Florence, Italy. La Movida is curated by Sarah Perks and is part of HOME's ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Festival running from 14th April until July 2017 at HOME, Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN.

• • • A King of the Wild Frontier

Savoy Books 1980. Cover art by Harry Douthwaite

Charles Platt's classic novel of comic depravity and future sex, The Gas, is being reissued by Orion as part of a nine-book deal that will see most of Platt's titles available once again. Other titles will include Dream Makers, his book of interviews with SF writers, first published by Savoy as Who Writes Science Fiction?, and his 'New Wave' science-fiction novel The City Dwellers. All titles will be in ebook format.

Prior to Lord Horror, The Gas was Savoy's most notorious title. Not only did bookshops in Britain refuse to sell it, our distributors of the time, New English Library, declined to handle it. The book also came under the censorious purview of the Manchester police, and its seizure in 1980 resulted in Savoyard David Britton's first prison sentence: twenty-eight days in the riot-torn slammer of Strangeways. (For writing and publishing Lord Horror he was sentenced in 1993 to four further months in Strangeways and other prisons.)

With this history in mind, Platt has dedicated the reissue to David Britton; the new edition will also contain an insightful introduction by Platt outlining his novel's chequered history including an account of the police attacks on Savoy Books and our fight-back. To the finger-wagging moralisers who object to extreme content in fantasy, Platt's introduction offers this reminder: "In the immortal words of Robert Crumb, 'It's only ink on paper, folks!'"

• • • Good Things Come in Threes

James Cawthorn T-shirt design featuring Elric of Melniboné from Michael Moorcock's 1963 novel, The Stealer of Souls. Limited to 10 shirts. The handwritten caption from Moorcock, dated Xmas 1993, adds: "To celebrate over 30 years of fruitful collaboration!"

Another book not by Savoy! The long-awaited hardcover memorial for the late James Cawthorn, James Cawthorn: The Man and His Art, is now approaching completion. The book is the result of the combined forces of Maureen Cawthorn Bell (Cawthorn's sister), publishers Jayde Design and cheerleading from the wings by Savoy Books. The process of selecting artwork for this career-spanning collection is now complete, and the book is awaiting design by John Coulthart before heading for the printers in July 2017.

As well as the swords-and-sorcery artwork for which he is known, the book will encompass Cawthorn's writing and film work, designs for T-shirts and shops, together with more personal material such as family photographs, Christmas cards and cartoons done for friends. Cawthorn was the first artist to depict scenes and characters from the The Lord of the Rings (after Tolkien's own illustrations, of course), and this artwork from the late fifties and early sixties, recently exhibited at the Great Hall of Newcastle Castle Keep, will also be included. The book will represent a lifetime's work from the artist whom Michael Moorcock calls the greatest British fantasy artist after Mervyn Peake, and the definitive portrayer of Moorcock's own Elric of Melniboné. This is a Savoy book in everything but name: we have acted as advisers, and thrown open our archives to the editors at Jayde Design, John and Maureen Davey. Drawn from the Cawthorn archive at the Bodleian in Oxford, Maureen Cawthorn Bell's own collection, and Savoy's archives, the book will be a lovely distillation of memoir and artwork from over two thousand illustrations spanning Cawthorn's career.

Watch this space for the publication announcement.