God's playground A history of Poland Volume 2, Davies Norman

"God's Playground" was first conceived in the early 1970s as a collection of essays on Polish History. I had just started my first academic post at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, and I aimed to put the best of my lectures to good use. I wrote up one essay/lecture on the Szlachta i.e. the Nobility, and then another on the Baltic Grain Trade, and sent them as samples to a distinguished literary publisher, Chatto and Windus, whose offices were on nearby Bedford Square. The proposal was accepted and Christopher Maclehose was appointed as my editor.Differences of opinion, however, soon arose. I thought that the contents could easily be expanded to produce a complete survey of Poland's 1000 year history. Mr. Maclehose thought that the essays should be slimmed down. We parted company, when, after defeating me heavily in a game of squash, he tried to insist that I cut 40 percent of the text from every page.