In 1914, the future of the Times Literary Supplement was in grave doubt as Lord Northcliffe, proprietor of Times Ltd, disliked its stalwart first editor, Bruce Richmond, and the kind of anti-populist reviews he favoured. On February 11, Lord Northcliffe’s manager, Reggie Nicholson, proposed that the TLS be “submerged in the paper” and its editor dispatched. Then, four days later, he had a change of heart and advised his boss to make the TLS a separate supplement costing a penny, the same price as The Times. This “mad scheme”, for which Lord Northcliffe held Nicholson entirely responsible, paid off: in 2002 the TLS celebrated its centenary by throwing a lavish party for literary London, in which the poet Paul Muldoon took to the stage to recite a sestina in the paper’s honour (“To the Threshing Floor” was published in the issue of January 18, alongside a brief history of the TLS by the Editor, Ferdinand Mount).

Yet only three years later, rumours were rife among the Supplements’ staff that Murdoch was about to sell; and, indeed, it was finally announced in October 2005 that the Times Educational Supplement and the Higher Educational Supplement were to be sold to a British equity company called Exponent for 235 million pounds. For the time being, however, the Times Literary Supplement is to remain in the fold, not least because Murdoch apparently signed an agreement precluding him from selling it when he bought The Times and its subsidiaries in 1981. So, 103 years after its first issue, the TLS has rejoined its former master and can no longer lean on the TES’s considerable advertising revenue to fill the coffers in times of need. What this will mean in the long run is anyone’s guess.

As I write, my own future with the TLS is uncertain and it is possible that “our woman in Sydney”, or the Australasian editor, as I am officially described, will be quietly retired, which will end an association of thirteen years and result in fewer books by Australian authors appearing in the TLS, particularly in the In Brief pages which soak up reviews at the rate of ten to twelve a week. The “briefies only took up one page when I started at the TLS in 1992 and became the In Brief editor and general editorial dogsbody. It seems incredible to me now that we were still being printed at the typesetters and that I would have to draw squiggles on a galley to show the setters where the text should run. When the messenger (an elderly chap called Fred who gave the office a box of Rose’s Chocolates every Christmas) brought back the proofs, there were always lots of introduced errors; the pages would be read, corrected and returned and this process would go on at least three times, or however long it took to get it right before press day on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, there were sometimes shouts of horror when the paper arrived in the office on Wednesday and we eagerly opened it up to see how it had fared in the printing shop overnight. I lived in fear of being the perpetrator of some terrible gaffe and was shamefaced about Randolph Stow appearing as Stowe; indeed, the letter “e” in names was my downfall as I also added it to Housman and to Moorhouse, derelictions for which I was forgiven. The change to desktop publishing and Quark in 1993 was supposed to save such mistakes, as well as reams of paper, but in reality nothing much changed. For all the advantages of on-screen editing, it remains easier to read the printed word and it is the only option for our esteemed page-proof reader Richard Brain, who retired some years ago but still comes in one day a week to wield his ferocious red pen. When I left the paper in 2002 to return home to Australia (after negotiating an agreement with the promotion’s manager to be paid a small monthly stipend to “raise the TLS’s profile” in the Antipodes), we were using a database to track reviews, and a system of storing them after they had been edited and returned to the writer for checking, that baffled successive IT assistants but seemed the essence of simplicity to the staff. Each week the Editor selected the reviews to appear in the next issue; these were marked out in a small book called the “Plan” which included space sold to advertisers. The adverts would often be moved, if a review came in late and was found to be twice as long to good purpose, or if a review came in and was no good at all, and so the Plan, in which all such changes were documented, was our bible and was forever going missing on an editor’s desk and provoking a rumpus. Often the Plan was found lurking under some proof pages on a great wooden cabinet known as the Tin, which was the hub of the paper and where people gathered to share a joke or discuss cricket scores, much to the chagrin of the deputy who fondly recalled an era when the talk was more edifying.

That era included the likes of Martin Amis, Victoria Glendinning, Blake Morrison and Peter Porter, who all did stints at the paper in their early careers; Alan Hollinghurst, who was the deputy for five years until 1990; and Redmond O’Hanlon and Galen Strawson who both put in more regular appearances than their present one day a month. The TLS has always been fortunate in its staff and the present-day editors either tend to specialize in nations - the Letter’s Editor, for instance, who speaks French and Italian, also commissions reviews of books to do with those countries - or disciplines, so that Redsi O’Hanlon, who is potty about bats and insects, deals with natural history.

Peter Stothard became the Editor of the TLS in 2002 and has written a great deal for the paper. He edited The Times for ten years and is said to be close to Murdoch, which must help the paper’s cause. He is also a passionate Classicist and any reader of the TLS will have noticed the gradual increase in these pages over the past two years and a commensurate decline in those devoted to politics which was the special subject of the previous editor, Ferdinand Mount. This partiality, however, has never seriously affected the paper’s raison d’etre - which as Ferdy put it, is its “comprehensive coverage, adventurousness [and] readiness to cover any book, no matter how obscure or difficult” – though the emphasis on literary theory during the 1980s saw the circulation fall to an all-time low of 26,414.

Ferdy, who was the Editor during my time at the paper and managed to increase the circulation by 9,000 or so, embodied all the virtues of old-time English publishing, being astonishingly well-read and modestly self-assured. This spirit determines the tone of the paper’s reviews as much as possible, and distinguishes it from smaller journals, both British and Australian, which at times allow contributors to air vendettas. The vituperative attack on Peter Craven published by Overland in the Summer issue of 2004 is a case in point. This piece stated that “Craven’s false critical coin has driven real criticism out of circulation, his only achievement as a critic having been to take up space that others might have filled productively.” It reeked of the “tall poppy” syndrome that seems to have taken root in literary Australia where opportunities to be heard are so far and few between. For Craven, as a literary journalist who survives solely by his pen, is an anomaly in Australia, whereas in Britain the TLS, for one, relies on a large number of freelance writers as well as academics. It is one of the main differences between the two intellectual cultures and is not altogether to do with the lopsided population figures.

An article in the Guardian of last October (gloomily entitled “Final Chapter for the TLS?) by the English academic John Sutherland described “the level of discourse on literature” as being “higher in literary London than anywhere else in the civilized world” and the literary pages of national newspapers and magazines as “more lively and discriminating than anywhere else”. While it’s possible to take umbrage with this, it’s impossible to claim the same thing for Australia, in spite of the growing number of literary festivals and audiences here. I’m inclined to assume the obvious, that Australia’s weather, beach and bush invite not reading but vigorous outdoor pursuits. A motif in Peter Carey’s affectionate account 30 Days in Sydney was the residents’ preoccupation with defeating the elements, particularly the ocean, and that could apply nationally. There are, of course, many more reasons, but it should also not be forgotten that we are such a young country in terms of European intellectual traditions which have had centuries to establish tenure.

The big change since I started at the TLS has been the rise of the Internet and it is only because of it that I can be “our woman in Sydney” at all. When I put together an Australian issue of the TLS in 1994 it was a nightmare trying to get in touch with publishers and reviewers and involved much swearing over the fax machine. Now I can commission local writers, edit their reviews and send them on to the TLS at the press of a key. This kind of intra-cultural dialogue is important; it was terrific, for instance, in September 2005, to have David Malouf on Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington-Smith - for those artists to be read about from Cambridge to Chicago. Even if it is an In Brief, it means a lot to authors to have just one international review.

I don’t think it will be the final chapter for the TLS quite yet, and reviews of books by Australians, albeit probably only those that make UK or US publication, will continue to appear whether I’m in post or not. Sydney-based readers of the National Library Australia News will know if the Australasian editor has survived by checking the programme of the city’s writers’ festival in May. If so, there will be a TLS Lecture, and I’ll be introducing it, as I have done for the past two years. It is my moment in the spotlight.

First published in the Australian Book Review, January 2006.