I was at Barts Hospital last night for the party to celebrate a number of literary prizes administered by the Society of Authors. The full list of winners will be published later today. The event was held in the beautiful Great Hall. It made a welcome change for a book trade party to see authors outnumber publishers by 50 to one.

The last time I was at Barts was when I was editor of Oxford Medical Publications (which is celebrating its centenary this year. Happy birthday OMP). I was working with the authors (A.E.Mourant, Ada C. Kopec and Kazimiera Domaniewska-Sobczak - and I remembered the names and spelling to this day) on the second edition of The distribution of the the human blood groups and other polymorphisms. It was over 1000 very large pages crammed with incomprehensible (to me) statistics and symbols. It was typeset in hot metal and then photographed for litho printing. We had galley proofs, page proofs, revised page proofs, ozalids and I know not what else. The typesetting cost was more than £100 per page. The book was a monster. We published in 1976 at £55 (roughly equivalent to £250 in today's money). It received a rave review on the op-ed page of the Times ('Here's a book to throw at racists'), amazing coverage in the medical press and we sold more than 2500 copies in the first month (probably not many thereafter, it is true). Those were the days when a serious book was reviewed seriously, priced seriously, stocked seriously and sold seriously.

Whilst on this nostalgia theme I was slightly sad yesterday to hear that Les Editions Grund depuis 1880 has been taken over by Editis ('Where creativity meets culture' - should there be a competition for the most hifalutin publishing strapline?). Not sad because anything terrible will happan. Editis are an excellent company and will treasure the Grund business. Sad because Alain Grund and Monique Souchon have played such important roles in French and European publishing and in particular for children's books. They are staying on and Editis have promised full editorial independence but I fear it just won't be the same.

But we must loook to the future and I see that this blog has a new competitor The Charkin Group committed to saving lives at sea. I didn't know there were Charkins in Nigeria but you live and learn.

And finally for Londoners, a recommendation. King's Cross where we have our London offices is not traditionally renowned for the quality of its restaurants. At various times it has led the world indices for availability of crack cocaine and ladies of the night, but not for food. However, things are changing fast and the latest indication of this is the opening of Camino Cruz del Rey (geddit?). All very chic but great food.