Publication: 10th May 2004
ISBN: 0 86730 114 5
RRP: £20
pp: 416
• • • The main voices in A Serious Life belong to David M Mitchellhis evaluation of the books, records and comics produced by Savoy Books over the last thirty yearsand the company’s founders, David Britton and Michael Butterworth, publishers of the eclectic, the maverick and the marginalised. Here they give their first ever extended interviews concerning the company’s history, and state their aims and intentions from Savoy’s inception in the early 1970s to the present day, most notably a disdain for anything occupying the middle ground and an insistent advocacy for the merging of High and Low culture.
Topics featured include their personal creations Lord Horror and Meng & Ecker, the 20-year confrontation of the company with the Greater Manchester Police Force, and the involvement of Index on Censorship and Geoffrey Robertson QC in the same, culminating in the defence of their works at the Royal Courts of Justice in 1996.
A Serious Life is an ironic title. It is a friendly book, and an informal read, to be dipped into at leisure by readers. It is hoped it will amuse as much as it will inform, entertain, irritate and confound.
This not-so-secret life of Savoy is designed by John Coulthart.
Assuredly our least commercial book, this illustrated, deluxe limited edition is a comprehensive history of Savoy. A chronicle of 30 years as publishing and creative entity and a compendium of our publishing and recording experiences, associations and liaisons with luminaries such as: