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The London Philatelist

assisting them in research for their articles and books. This during the time when I was, from 1970,
with the Expert Department of H R Harmer Ltd, the philatelic auctioneers, and later as Philatelic
Curator at the British Library from 1983. I had seen a lot of Norman, in connection with the Philatelic
Writers Society, whose meetings and happy conferences we both attended. The Society existed in
the UK from to 1982 to 2000.
Thus I have been much influenced by both Maurice and Norman, especially the latter who was by
profession a barrister and, latterly, a law reporter for The Times newspaper London. His understanding
of the importance of accuracy is only slightly put in the shade by Sir Edward Denny Bacon (1860-1938),
a man of quite another generation. On numerous occasions, to me directly, or to groups involved with
philatelic research and understanding, Norman had two great pieces of advice. One was "to get up all
of the literature" and the second was "every book needs, indeed requires, an index". I have found such
wise words central to any endeavour or scholarship in any subject.
The reason for writing this piece (apart from as a matter of record), is that in recent months I
have become aware of a dangerous idea firmly expressed, that an index is not always necessary in
a printed book. There can be very few occasions when a book does not need an index - perhaps
when it is in the form of an encyclopaedia arranged alphabetically, but even then it depends on the
nature and extent of the text. It has been stated that a good contents page or pages might be an
indication of the structure of a printed book, indeed they should be, but they will not contain, even
if extensive explanatory text is provided, the level of detail to be sure that information can be found
without reading a large number of pages. Authors and publishers should understand, I believe, that
any good book of substance is written for the user or reader and not for the self-aggrandisement
of the writer. The test is how useful is the printed book to the user and, when used as a reference
book, how easily will the required information be found. Hence the importance of the index.
I remember having a long conversation, probably in 1994, with my good friend the late E.Victor
Toeg (1916-2010) about his excellent book Dominica Postal History, Stamps and Postal Stationery
(1994). It is the product of a lifetime’s interest in the subject, of which he formed an important
collection. It has 216 pages and is broadly arranged chronologically. While it has two quite useful
Contents pages, it lacks an index. In our good-natured conversation I said that it should have an
index. He responded that it was arranged in date order. My reply was that if I wanted to know about
a printer, or of the involvement of the Crown Agents, it would mean that I would have to read
almost all of the text to be sure of discovering the desired information!
As another example, I would mention a recently-published printed book (I am not going to give
its author or title) on a subject where the only other book covering the area was published in the
1960s - also unindexed. This recent volume has just under 190 pages, lacks an index and its Contents
page. listing ten chapters and a number of appendices, has such chapter titles as: ‘A modest beginning
and a brilliant idea,’ ‘I had a dream,’ ‘Life after that,’ - without any further explanation. I leave it for
the reader to form his or her own views.
The compiling of an index is a skilled art, calling for knowledge of the subject and something of how
the book will be used. There is little point of an indexed subject heading where 20-plus page numbers
are given; this probably means that further subdivision of the subject is required. I recommend James
Negus's splendid book Philatelic Literature Compilation Techniques and Reference Sources, (1991) which
has two indexes! (Not ‘indices,’ which are something quite different).

References
Negus, J. (1991) Philatelic Literature Compilation Techniques and Reference Sources, Limassol.
Toeg, E. V. (1994) Dominica Postal History, Stamps and Postal Stationery. Volume 1, St Neots.

129 – 322 September 2020