Saw in a London bookshop today the 'Library of Congress WWII Calendar for 2003' with a typical 'MOHAA/SPR' D-Day photo on the front. OK. There's a pic for each month, 11 of which are US topics. OK - it is the Library of Congress, after all. But wait - here's a 'token' Brit pic for January ! Caption : 'Winston Churchill talks to General Bernard Law Montgomery, 1940'. Hang on a minute - the officer in the photo is tall, handsome, immaculately turned out, doesn't have a moustache and does very clearly sport 'Airborne' flashes on his shoulders. Yep - it's Frederick 'Boy' Browning, a well-known photo taken in (I think) 1943. Is the ghost of Sam Goldwyn roaming the Library of Congress ?? I can hear it now : - 'Okay, it's some goddam Limey General - gotta be Monty, right ? ' If it were some 'cheap and nasty' publisher, I wouldn't mind so much. But the Library of Congress ??? What a bloody poor effort !!
Wow... Coming from an editor, that is a really bad one! For a calendar... the main "attraction" is the photos- at least those need to be correct. I cold see a minor error or two in some extra text, or maybe a missed date. But monty? Or rather, no monty? Agreed, Martin- that one is really bad!
Sounds really bad, actually, but hey...maybe it´s Monty in disguise. You know, he used to do that quite a lot because of German assassins... Something you didn´t know, right?
That's it - you've got it ! While M R Clifton James walked around as Monty's 'stand-in', Monty became Browning - and the 'Churchill' in the photo is actually Goering smoking a cigar, right ? Seriously - can you imagine, say, the Imperial War Museum putting out an 'official' calendar mis-captioning Jim Gavin as Eisenhower ???
Martin I have a worse one. Royal Naval Historical Branch. They produced a book on the Norway Campaign, basically the post-WW2 battle report. They captioned Rocs as Skuas! The RNHB of all people! Jock Gardiner needs to hang his head in shame, it's worse than when they did a photo of Cunningham and accidentally reversed the negative so it looked like he was going astern. And these are supposed to be serious historians. Jumbo
Maybe some of our colleagues involved in book writing/production can clear this up. Do the authors have anything at all to do with choosing/captioning pictures ? So often I pick up a book and replace it unbought because of inaccurate photo captions... is it all left to some a junior staff member in the publisher's basement on a Friday afternoon ?
Publishing practices vary widely depending on company and type of book, but Martin, I can tell you about textbooks from our company... Authors have nothing to do with photo and art selection. Authors come up with the body text, designers create the layouts and format, and generally the editors are the ones who select the photos. Photo captions are generally checked pretty well, mainly because, as you say, they do stand out. In our case it gets difficult, because there is so much in the book to "edit". In a (minor) defence of the publishers who did that calendar, it would suprise many people just how many things need to be "edited" in most books. The main thing that does make textbooks different is reviewing. In addition to being edited, our textbooks get reviewed, in nearly final versions, by quite a few people before being sent to any classrooms. This helps catch many things... "Normal" books rarely do this kind of review. Guess maybe they should! Again, though, keep in mind that these are only our publishing practices. In the case of many books, it's entirely possible that photo captions ARE done by that guy in the basement friday afternoon! [ 21 October 2002, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: CrazyD ]
Saw a Illu8trated London News 50th anniversary publication on Arnhem battle think its title was Red Devils....not sure Ill have to find it again..but makes me laugh everytime I see it.. Sort of semi official magazine release with blessings of MOD....has a pic of 1st airborne members withdrawing across the Rhine...only its in daylight...boat seems to be motor gun boat of some sort manned by Royal Navy personel...mannng twin lewis machine guns...and there quite clearly in middle of mele..is John frost tin hat, moustache and all...Think it was actually a pic of exercise for Bruneval raid...
