Attallah, Naim 1931–

Naim Ibrahim Attallah)

PERSONAL: Born May 1, 1931, in Haifa, Palestine (now Israel); immigrated to England, c. 1949; son of Ibrahim and Genevieve Attallah; married Maria Nykolyn (an interior decorator), 1957; children: one son. Education: Studied engineering at Battersea Polytechnic. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, cinema, theater, classical music, opera.

ADDRESSES: Home—25 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7PP, England. Office—Quartet Books, 27 Goodge St., London W1P 2LD, England. E-mail—nattallah@aol.com.

CAREER: Publisher, film and theater producer, businessman, and author. During early career, worked as a power company steeplejack, a foreign exchange dealer, beginning 1957, and as a financial consultant, beginning 1966; director of companies, beginning 1969; Quartet Books (publishing house), London, England, publisher and owner, 1976–; also publisher and owner of The Women's Press, 1977–, and Robin Clark, 1980–; founder of magazines, including Literary Review, 1981–2001, Wire, 1984–2000, and Oldie, 1991–2001; owner, The Academy Club, 1989–97. Asprey, PLC, 1979–92, financial director and IT managing director, chief executive officer, 1992–95; managing director, Mappin & Webb, 1990–95; managing director, Watches of Switzerland, 1992–95; executive director, Garrard, 1990–95. Producer of stage plays, including (and copresenter of Lyric) Happy End, 1975, (presenter and producer of Duke of York's) The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, 1981, and (as coproducer of Mermaid) Trafford Tanzi, 1982; film producer, including (with David Frost) The Slipper and the Rose, 1974, and (as executive producer) Brimstone and Treacle, 1982; producer and presenter of television documentaries. Perfume designer, including of Parfums Namara, a line of fragrances including Avant l'Amour and Après l'Amour, 1985, and l'Amour de Namara, 1990.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Authors (fellow), Beefsteak Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: M.A., University of Surrey, 1993; Retail Personality of the Year, UK Jewelry Awards, 1993.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Compiler) Women (interviews), Quartet Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Singular Encounters, Quartet Books (London, England), 1990.

Of a Certain Age (interviews with celebrities), Quartet Books (London, England), 1992.

More of a Certain Age, Quartet Books (London, England), 1993.

Speaking for the Oldie, Quartet Books (London, England), 1994.

Asking Questions: An Anthology of Encounters with Naim Attallah, Quartet Books (London, England), 1996.

A Woman a Week, Quartet Books (London, England), 1998.

In Conversation with Naim Attallah, Quartet Books (London, England), 1998.

Insights: An Anthology of Interviews, Quartet Books (London, England), 1999.

Dialogues (interviews), Quartet Books (London, England), 2000.

Old Ladies of Nazareth (memoir), Quartet Books (London, England), 2004.

The Boy in England (memoir), Quartet Books (London, England), 2005.

In Touch with His Roots (memoir), Quartet Books (London, England), 2006.

FICTION

A Timeless Passion, Quartet Books (London, England), 1995.

Tara & Claire, Quartet Books (London, England), 1996.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Two more memoirs.

SIDELIGHTS: Naim Attallah has had a colorful career as a publisher, film and stage producer, business executive, and even fragrance designer. Born in Palestine, he moved to England at the age of eighteen to study engineering. Deciding he did not enjoy the subject, and suffering from some financial problems, he dropped out of school and forged his own career. By the 1960s, he was making a very good living in banking, which he then leveraged into a successful publishing career; and by the 1980s he had ventured into stage and film productions, including the movie Brimstone and Treacle, starring Sting; he also began writing nonfiction, interview collections, and erotic novels. In London, he became known as a very charismatic personality whose publishing house Quartet Books sometimes offered titillating titles and held publishing parties featuring women dressed in lingerie serving drinks. In 2004, however, a scandal ensued when one of Attallah's former employees, Jennie Erdal, published Ghostwriter: A Memoir. In this book, Erdal declared that she had been Attallah's ghostwriter, penning his articles, working on his interviews, and authoring his novels. Attallah responded by denying Erdal's allegations, though he refused to sue her. "All the feminists would be up in arms, saying, 'Look what he's doing to that poor woman, he's trying to crush her!'" he explained to Sa-mantha Conti in W.

With Old Ladies of Nazareth and The Boy in England, Attallah began a planned four-volume memoir about his childhood and rise to success in England. Describing the book as a "lyrical tale of powerful simplicity, which reads like a fable," a writer for This Week in Palestine praised the autobiography as a "poignant and touching autobiographical portrait" about Attallah's days in Haifa, where he was raised by his grandmother and great-aunt. In the Spectator critic Caroline Moore-head described it as "a charming tale, fluently told."

Continuing his story with The Boy in England, Attallah tells of a young man's adventures in a foreign country, where he mostly allows his hormones to take over, obsessing about sexual encounters for the most part. Although Moorehead complained of the author's use of the third person, she praised The Boy in England for its "pacy and eager" tone.

Attallah told CA: "I got interested in writing at the age of twelve. I wrote poetry in Arabic and ran a news sheet during the second world war, for sale to our entourage of family and friends.

"I was influenced as a boy by the writing of Pearl S. Buck about China, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, and Stephen Zweig. Being French educated, I read the classics, Molière, Racine, Victor Hugo, and such modern writers like André Gide, Jean Cocteau, Jean Paul Sartre, and the Russian writer Maxim Gorki.

"I write long-hand, very old fashioned. Then I have it typed to be corrected. The most surprising thing I learned as a writer is once the flow is smooth and seems unending, don't stop. Carry on until you literally drop! My own favorite book, although small, is Old Ladies of Nazareth. Reliving my childhood with two wonderful old ladies who were to shape my future life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Attallah, Naim, Old Ladies of Nazareth, Quartet Books (London, England), 2004.

Attallah, Naim, The Boy in England, Quartet Books (London, England), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph (London, England), November 17, 2004, Anne Chisholm, "The Ghost Materializes," reviews of Old Ladies of Nazareth and Ghosting.

Guardian (Manchester, England), December 18, 2004, Blake Morrison, "Breaking Cover: Black Morrison Reads between the Lines of Jennie Erdal's Ghosting and Naim Attallah's Old Ladies of Nazareth."

Spectator, April 30, 2005, Caroline Moorehead, "The Boy Done Good," review of The Boy in England, p. 41.

Times (London, England), December 17, 2004, Valerie Grove, "I Wrote Naim Attallah's Every Word," interview with Naim Attallah.

W, March, 2005, Samantha Conti, "War of the Words: London Mogul Naim Attallah Blasts Off at the Woman Who Says She Was His Longtime Ghostwriter," p. 340.

ONLINE

This Week in Palestine, http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/ (March 2, 2006), review of Old Ladies of Nazareth.