night in the immediate, agonised aftermath of Mrs Gray’s departure, I found myself scrabbling in the cupboard for that old sleeping bag, and finding it I crept with stifled sobs into my mother’s room and spread it on the floor, as I used to. What did my mother think? I believed she was asleep, but presently—did she know I was weeping?—I heard a rustling sound and her hand came out from under the sheet and she touched me on the shoulder, offering me her finger to hold on to, as in the old days. I went rigid, of course, and shrank back from her touch, and presently she withdrew her hand and turned over with a heave and a sigh, and soon was snoring. I watched the window above me. The night was ending and the dawn was coming on, and light, uncertain as yet, a faint effulgence, was seeping in around the edges of the curtain. My eyes ached from weeping and my throat was swollen and raw. What I thought could not end had ended. Whom now would I love, and who would love me? I listened to my mother snoring. The air in the room was stale from her breath. One world was ending, without a sound. I looked to the window again. The light around the curtain was stronger now, a light that seemed somehow to shake within itself even as it strengthened, and it was as if some radiant being were advancing towards the house, over the grey grass, across the mossed yard, great trembling wings spread wide, and waiting for it, waiting, I slipped without noticing into sleep.
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks — the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company — and change the world.
‘We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.’
The quality paperback had arrived — and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy. We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.
So wherever you see the little bird — whether it’s on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism — you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.
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First published 2012
Copyright © John Banville, 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-670-92063-1
