Neil Pearson

In writing a scholarly biography, actor and bibliophile Neil Pearson has surprised the literary world—but not as much as his subject, the publisher of a collection of controversial early 20th-century literary works. Al Senter meets a man well on his way to proving that anything is possible

There are many reasons for becoming an actor. The profession is filled with show-offs, narcissists, art lovers and introverts—some even look to mask dissatisfaction with their own lives: what better escape than trying on someone else for size? But comparatively few actors will have chosen their uncertain profession over a hidden vocation. The more one delves into the secret life of actor Neil Pearson, the more it appears he is an academic manqué—a professor trapped in actors' clothing. Rather than bestriding the West End stage, or headlining in a new television drama, you sense Pearson would prefer to be standing behind a lectern at some ancient seat of learning, dazzling undergraduates with his critical insights.

His youthful appearance belying his age—he's currently cruising through his late forties—Pearson is probably best known to television audiences as Dave Charnley, the gambling, womanising newsroom hack in Drop The Dead Donkey. His star status was confirmed in the role of maverick detective superintendent Tony Clark in Between the Lines, a character so frequently found in bed with various female admirers that the tabloids renamed the series "Between the Sheets". Yet Pearson is not the luvvie type.

His blokeish amiability means that he is usefully cast as the guy you meet in the Dog and Duck, or on the football terraces—which in his case means at White Hart Lane, following his beloved Tottenham Hotspur. Given his modest background and the generality of the parts he's called upon to play, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that Pearson is a dedicated bibliophile, and that the nucleus of his 2,500-strong collection of first editions reflects a passion for the writing that emerged in Paris between the wars.

Pearson is not only an expert collector. He is also a voracious reader who has just devoted four years of his life to researching and writing Obelisk, a biography of writer Jack Kahane and the publishing house, Obelisk Press, that he founded in Paris in the 1920s. It was in the life and career of one of the Obelisk Press authors, Henry Miller (1891-1980)—creator of once scandalous works such as Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn—that Pearson found his own role model. Just as Miller kicked over the traces of his New York life to pursue his literary dreams in Paris, so Pearson defied family scepticism to become a successful actor.

"I suppose I felt a kind of confederacy with Miller," he reflects. "He lived two completely different lives and didn't publish Tropic of Cancer, his first book, until he was in his forties. Not without cost, he achieved something which most people only dream of doing: he started his life all over again. So it was a great comfort for me to know that you can realise your dreams if you are driven enough, even when you're about to enter a profession as precarious as acting. Miller's example demonstrates that really anything is possible."

Pearson's lady-killing image, much encouraged by the tabloids, does have some parallels with his private life: he has enjoyed lengthy relationships with a number of feisty actresses, including Frances Barber and Siobhan Redmond. Yet to the great joy of his many female fans, he remains single. Presumably his unmarried state has made it easier for him to build up his collection, a passion that began by chance more than 20 years ago.

"I was appearing in a production of Joe Orton's Loot in the West End with Leonard Rossiter when I happened to be walking through Cecil Court past the second-hand and antiquarian bookshops," relates Pearson. "I'd been reading Books Do Furnish a Room—quite an appropriate title for me—which is the 10th novel in Anthony Powell's sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. In one shop-window I noticed a first edition of Hearing Secret Harmonies, the final book in the sequence, and so I went in to ask the price. I was astonished by what I heard. '£30?' I said. Nevertheless I paid up, and then I realised that I'd now have to find first editions of the other 11 Dance titles. So I did."

Pearson soon discovered that he possessed what he calls "the collector's gene". At first he collected indiscriminately within the limits of his actor's income, but gradually he narrowed his field to 20th-century titles—"books which I like and would have read in any case". It was his passion for Henry Miller that led him to specialise in work that would have fallen foul of the obscenity laws in Britain or America but that was permissible in the more liberal ambience of Paris between the wars.

The French capital at that time was a magnet for English-speaking writers seeking the freedom to express ideas contrary to the prevailing morality at home. With the likes of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein all resident at some point between 1918 and 1939, there must have been some memorable literary parties. Pearson draws a distinction between the hedonistic 1920s, brought to an abrupt end by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, and the more serious-minded 1930s, with Europe sliding inexorably towards war.

There was Prohibition in America between 1920 and 1933, but in Paris "the dollar-to-franc exchange rate was very favourable, accommodation was cheap and plentiful, hashish and opium were readily available and homosexuality, if not actually celebrated, was certainly tolerated," Pearson says. What's more, there was a loophole in the French obscenity laws: "They only applied to books published in French. But if the work was in English you could more or less publish what you liked. It seems to have been viewed by the French authorities with a typically Gallic shrug of indifference. Publishers such as Kahane were quick to take advantage."

For Pearson to launch himself into a project as ambitious and as financially unrewarding as Obelisk seems like an act of courage, if not folly. "I've written the kind of book I went looking for when I started to research the subject," he says. "I quickly realised that I was writing three books in one: a biography of Kahane, a series of Brief Lives of his writers and a bibliography for other book collectors."

By dint of some deft planning and occasional forbearance on the part of his acting agents, Pearson has been able to pursue parallel careers. "I have a day job that either starts at six in the morning when the car comes to take you to the set, or at six in the evening when you arrive at the theatre. To go into the British Library and work from 10 until five, the way other people do, made a change." Likewise, when he has been on tour in cities such as Oxford, Cambridge or Edinburgh, he has spent his days making the most of university research facilities.

It's the sort of work ethic of which Kahane would have approved. Kahane grew up as part of the Jewish community in Manchester, the son of a prosperous textile businessman who went bankrupt and killed himself. His literary ambitions brought him into contact with the thriving cultural scene in Manchester in the early years of the 20th century, especially with the Manchester School of playwrights attracted by the pioneering work of Annie Horniman at the Gaiety Theatre.

A committed francophile, Kahane saw World War I as a means of defending his beloved France against the invader, and settled in his adopted country at the end of hostilities in 1918. Initially, he experienced some literary success, but it was financial expediency and an eye for the commercial possibilities created by various succès de scandale that prompted him to set up his own publishing house.

The Obelisk list contains such eminent names as James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Cyril Connolly and Lawrence Durrell, as well as fascinating (if peripheral) figures such as Norman Douglas, Frank Harris and Richard Aldington. Some of its titles—for example, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, a Sapphic romance that was banned in Britain in 1928—are books of their time, important as cultural markers rather than lasting works of literary merit. With admirable doggedness, Pearson set himself the task of not only reading the neglected works of the obscure Obelisk authors, but researching their equally dusty lives as well. He went excavating in search of such splendidly named and long-forgotten writers as Nadejda de Bragança and Gawen Brownrigg, N Reynolds Packard and Princess Paul Troubetzkoy, not to mention Theodore Zay and the mysterious writer known only by the nom de plume Arion.

"It's the bit players in literary history who interest me rather than the giants," Pearson explains. Kahane appeared so often as a footnote in other people's biographies that the actor was keen to explore his life in more depth. When it came to uncovering the lives of his authors, he treated it as a game. "I have a stubborn streak in me that made me determined to finish this even if it killed me. It was like a hunt. I was motivated not only by the thrill of the chase but by the need to prove to everybody that I could do it." At the same time he found writing a biography had parallels with acting: "I'd ask myself the same questions about Kahane that I ask when I start to work on a character."

In undertaking this literary archaeology, has he unearthed any hidden treasures? "I think that some of the authors and some of the books deserve to be better known," says Pearson. "But there were no neglected masterpieces. It didn't happen." Many actors, with long hours to fill waiting by the telephone, will admit to tinkering with a screenplay; and in most cases they are exposed to a good deal of the best writing, from Shakespeare to Shaw, Coward to Wilde, or Pinter to Stoppard. As a result they often develop an ear for pleasing dialogue. But what Pearson did was much more challenging: he took on the literary biographers, academics and bibliophiles on their home turf.

"Because of my job, I've always read scripts, and I've read them with a critical eye," he says. "I'm not trying to pass myself off as a critic or social historian, but I know my stuff. I hope I have written a book that is readable, works as a biography, contains a few good jokes and won't intimidate people."

You might expect the pride of Pearson's book collection to be something rare and risqué from the house of Obelisk, but it turns out to be an unexpected treasure. "It's only half a dozen scraps of paper on which the poet Coleridge wrote to his drug dealer. He was trying ostensibly to get clean but he managed to find a boy who'd run to the nearest apothecary for more supplies. Then there are also explanations for his inability to pay his bills," continues Pearson. "He comes up with every feeble excuse you can name, including that his next book is at the printers so he'll soon be in funds. It's a heart-breaking example of genius off-duty."

Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press by Neil Pearson is published by the Liverpool University Press at £25