There were some art directors who had come to Penguin to fit into the Penguin notion of uniformity and conformity. And there [were] the green Penguins, they were mysteries, and the purple Penguins, they were, I think, travel.

[Q] That’s right – green Agatha Christie, orange for George Orwell. Lady Chatterley’s Lover…

That would have been orange, I think. Yes. But... and they were very arcane discussions that took place, whether it should be orange or green or blue, or whatever colour. It... I mean, it was... there was an aspect of priesthood to it. It was all a celebration of Penguin, but not of the author and not of the reader. And that’s what I tried to do. And, of course, I was attacked for being very commercial and very American. But actually, what I was was a publisher, and a publisher is someone who wants to find readers for his books. He believes in his books and he wants not only to sell them to make money out of them, he wants to be validated. Penguin wanted to be validated for itself, and much of that we retained, but not entirely. And I think the change was very important.