“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect,” WROTE TOM STOPPARD: If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”
Peter Padfield, in "Hess, Hitler & Churchill: The Real Turning Point of the Second World War," claimed that Rudolf Hess’s May 1941 flight to Britain (generally thought to be a solo act) was authorized by Hitler. Allegedly Hess had with him a proposal for an armistice with Britain and German withdrawal from Western Europe in exchange for a free hand to attack Russia.
Detroit spent millions trying to understand what buyers wanted—and acted accordingly. It wasn’t a case of “Grosse Pointe myopians” dictating their preferences. Almost every failure—from the Henry J to the Edsel to the longer-wider-faster American Motors mid-60s models—was an example of product planners misreading market forces. Every notable success, from the early Rambler to the ponycar to the musclecar, was an example of getting it right. For whatever they built (and they built some pretty bad cars): Don’t blame Detroit. Blame us.
The Collected Works are less important than their spectacular appearance suggests. However incomplete, they do constitute the first collected edition. But lacking the original texts, they are not bibliographically compelling: “expensive reprints,” as one cynic put it. Collectors prefer to hold a book in the form Sir Winston first gave it to the world (errors and all). So the Works will never replace first editions.
