“Perhaps the first thing I should say is that, though I have lived in this country for 39 years, I feel very “European”, (even more so since Brexit!), but have dual nationality, French and British.

As a child, I lived in several countries and learned a few languages which helped me a lot in my future working life. After living for a year in North America, first in Montreal then in New York, I came back to Paris and joined Ogilvy & Mather, an American advertising agency which had just opened its French office. I stayed for five years. My heart wasn’t completely in it, so when the job of Foreign Rights Director for the prestigious French publishing house Flammarion came up, I applied and was luckily chosen.

I was there for ten years, trying to convince publishers around the world to publish our authors in their country. This is how I met my husband Christopher, who was then the publisher of The Harvill Press. We married in 1985. Eighteen months later, I founded a scouting agency, first with four publishers – one exclusively per country, from Finland, Sweden, Germany and Italy – which grew to 14 countries in less than 8 years. By the time I retired two years ago, it was 22. The agency is now called London Literary Scouting.

The job of literary scout is hardly known unless you are part of the corporation! When I started, we were perhaps 25 around the world, all concentrated in London and New York, with one or two people in Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Munich. Now every trade publisher around the world uses a scout! Our job is that of an informer (what is circulating, what is making noise, what has been sold to a film company for staggering amounts of money etc…) and a pointer (this is fantastic – reading report attached of course; this may have sold for lots of money but it’s terrible…). We receive a retainer from each publisher and expenses but get no commission. In other words, we are not agents. This is very important because it keeps our judgment completely independent. To recommend Harry Potter or Stieg Larsson’s trilogy will not make any difference to our bank account!

At first, I was informing essentially on books published on the British market but very quickly I started informing also on French and Italian books, as I could read both these languages. It was a trend I started – scouts used to be very territorial – now the agencies tend to inform on books from the entire planet with readers producing reports from the Chinese, Icelandic, Brazilian, Arabic etc.

It is a work we all do with passion. The pleasure of reading something long before it is published, and seeing it recognised not only in this country but all over the world is just unmatchable. It is very difficult to abandon this. This is why, despite having handed over my agency to my two colleagues in 2016, I went on scouting French books until the end of 2022.

Here are some of my favourite books that I scouted, which have achieved great success:

And one that I strongly believe is a must-read for all is The Journal of Hélène Berr by Hélène Berr. From April 1942 to March 1944, Hélène Berr, a recent graduate of the Sorbonne, kept a journal that is both an intensely moving, intimate, harrowing, appalling document and a text of astonishing literary maturity.

With her colleagues, she plays the violin and she seeks refuge from the everyday in what she calls the “selfish magic” of English literature and poetry. Hélène and her family are arrested in March 1944 and sent to Auschwitz. The last words in the journal she had left behind hidden in her violin were “Horror! Horror! Horror!”, a hideous and poignant echo of her English studies. This astonishing text was kept within her surviving family until a niece made it her life’s duty to bring it to the world in 2008.
Today I go on reading of course (for example for various juries in France) but also to help my husband, who after being a publisher for over 50 years with writers translated from 37 languages, decided to start a new publishing house at the age of 83 called Open Borders Press. I also spend time with my granddaughters and travel. I want to give back and am looking to work with refugee organisations and food banks. Age does not diminish our intellectual capacities, empathy, or curiosity — it enriches them.”

Circle Square Member Q&A

What 3 words best describe you? Curious, Gregarious, Engaging

If you could offer your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be? Not to jump too quickly to conclusions, be more reflective.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement? To have crossed the channel almost 40 years ago and have married my husband.

Which person (dead or alive) would you most like to invite to dinner? George Sand, an important writer in the 19th Century and early feminist, who wrote under a male pen name. A biography of her life has recently been published which I would recommend “George Sand: True Genius, True Woman”

How has age strengthened your advantage? I’m more relaxed about life. I know who I am and I don’t have to prove everything.

What inspired you to join Circle Square? I attended a book event and enjoyed meeting many of the members who I found curious and interesting.