The body was a Writers' Advisory Committee, to help the government out in tapping the skills and patriotism of authors generally in the war effort, including in writing material for the Ministry of Information. The people suggested were "all very establishment names, picked over for co-operativeness or faults". Sayers is the only one whose fault ("very loquacious and difficult") is reported in the book, though the Public Records Office files apparently contain all the notes. Sir Hugh Walpole was proposed as the chair, but the Ministry demurred. The book doesn't say why; his homosexuality (discreet, but probably pretty well known in literary circles) might have been a factor. The book did suggest that the government people seemed to think that authors in general couldn't be trusted, and that a committee of authors would end in bickering. The president of the Publishers' Association, Geoffrey Faber (ie Faber & Faber) was consulted, and advised: "authors are with rare exceptions, egocentric persons. They are not cohesive, they are not good at collectively tackling an impersonal problem. They mostly lack both knowledge and judgement of the means whereby their own books are actually sold: and this lack is the more dangerous because they are apt to assume they know all about it." Following that, the whole idea of a writer's advisory committee was dropped, and the job of selecting writers to write material for the Ministry was left to Ministry's own general production department - the job went (are you ready for this?) to a former employee of... Geoffrey Faber!
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The people suggested were "all very establishment names, picked over for co-operativeness or faults". Sayers is the only one whose fault ("very loquacious and difficult") is reported in the book, though the Public Records Office files apparently contain all the notes.
Sir Hugh Walpole was proposed as the chair, but the Ministry demurred. The book doesn't say why; his homosexuality (discreet, but probably pretty well known in literary circles) might have been a factor. The book did suggest that the government people seemed to think that authors in general couldn't be trusted, and that a committee of authors would end in bickering.
The president of the Publishers' Association, Geoffrey Faber (ie Faber & Faber) was consulted, and advised: "authors are with rare exceptions, egocentric persons. They are not cohesive, they are not good at collectively tackling an impersonal problem. They mostly lack both knowledge and judgement of the means whereby their own books are actually sold: and this lack is the more dangerous because they are apt to assume they know all about it."
Following that, the whole idea of a writer's advisory committee was dropped, and the job of selecting writers to write material for the Ministry was left to Ministry's own general production department - the job went (are you ready for this?) to a former employee of... Geoffrey Faber!