View from here: Peter Hennessy

I am becoming nervous of marking. At times when all I want to do is wield the red pen until the pile of essays is gone, the phone has a habit of ringing with a journalist from a serious paper on the line seeking a reaction to some event or impending development. Nowadays I usually decline politely to comment, having stuck to my vow to forsake the media (this column apart) from 3 May 1997 in order to concentrate on the academic and bookwriting aspects of life.

In June last year I broke my vow at the height of the exam season when I felt so strongly about the danger that the No 10 Downing Street Private Office might be politicised that I gave a few tart comments to this amongst other papers, to the gratifying annoyance of those central to Mr Blair's court.

Last month, while confronting one of the annual peaks of essay-marking, the phone did not stop ringing for three days after the news of the Patten/HarperCollins affair erupted. Once more the scripts were temporarily set aside while I made as much fuss as I could on both radio and television, as well as in the press, in a mood of controlled outrage.

The affair as it affects me is not yet resolved. As soon as my former HarperCollins editor, Stuart Proffitt, finds a new berth I shall make every effort to move my books out of Mr Murdoch's irreparably tarnished publishing house to the one that has the great good fortune to acquire Stuart. I am not one for breaking contracts, but if HarperCollins agrees to release me, I shall repay the advances and be off.

Reflecting on the affair in relative tranquillity, however, I reckon there are essential elements to my genuine and continuing outrage. One is the treatment of Stuart, one of the three finest editors with whom I have worked (the others are Sean Magee, at Gollancz, and David Godwin, formerly of Cape and now a literary agent). Stuart is honourable, gifted and utterly frank. The only reason I went to HarperCollins in the first place was him.

Second, houses like HarperCollins represent (or should do) the premier league of the publishing arm of any open society. They are as important to the free-thinking capacity of an advanced nation as its newspapers and broadcasting media.

Book publishers are not mere industrial enterprises. They depend on their own economic health; they also have functions which transcend the commercial. The Stuart Proffitts of this world are the talismans of that vital symbiosis where commercial and scholarly judgements meet. Interference and misjudgement of the kind Mr Murdoch and his people inflicted on the HarperCollins enterprise last month ended in an instant its claim to be a truly serious and world- class publishing player.

The scholarly world needs its Proffitts and its top-flight publishing houses. Stuart had attracted a superb galere of British historians. It was an honour to be in their company. Most, though not all, I suspect, will follow their editor wherever he goes, not because we are publishing's "luvvies", as some have portrayed us, but because we appreciate the precious, profoundly important and indispensable relationship between author and editor.

Rarely in life are issues as clear cut. For once the essays could wait.

Peter Hennessy is professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.