Published: 19 January, 2012
by GERALD ISAAMAN

Martin Rynja attracts trouble.

He is a brave and determined independent publisher always willing to consider contentious books that major companies admit they are afraid to put into permanent print.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown through the letter box of his Islington home and it did halt his publication of a fictionalised story of the first wife and child bride of Mohammed.

Indeed, Martin went into hiding – under police guard – from three Islamic extremists who were subsequently sent to prison for conspiracy to commit arson.

On another occasion, he feared he might be prosecuted for criminal libel, but such pressures have not stopped the progress of his admired company, Gibson Square, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary.

It is a remarkable achievement when you consider his past achievements publishing, for example: Londonistan by Melanie Phillips; Blowing up Russia, by the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko; The Rotten State of Britain, by Eamonn Butler; and House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger.

They have all fitted into the exceptional catalogue of the 47-year-old Dutchman whose belief in the freedom of thought stems from reading jurisprudence at Oxford.

That has resulted in him publishing the memoirs of Diana Mosley, wife of the fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and Sergo Beria’s polemical memoirs of his father Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s KGB chief.

It has given him too the opportunity to discover – and commission – new writers whose talents attracted him.

So his mission in his anniversary year is for Gibson Square to extend significantly its catalogue into both humour and contemporary fiction.

And that is despite the fact that publishing and book sales are entering a tough and challenging period brought about not only by the recession but also by the arrival of the mighty Kindle and other eBooks.

“In publishing one needs to be a pessimistic optimist,” Martin says.

“Reading is like yoga for the mind and there will always be a need for a good exercise to stretch and sharpen your brain.

“At the same time, the changes that are happening are the first major ones since the invention of the book. So it is currently daunting in the sense that it is becoming more difficult for independent publishers to exist.”

One reason for Martin’s lack of defeatism is that he has teamed up with a new initiative from the publishers Faber, who will be responsible for its sales representation, as well as selling the rights Gibson Square has acquired on a global basis.

“This is one way of planning for the future,” he insists.

This perhaps explains his passion for new pastures.

It follows his success last year publishing Love in a Warm Climate, by Helena Frith Powell, and Sam Taylor’s East of Islington.

“Love in a Warm Climate is about infidelity and how the English heroine tries to cope with her husband’s antics in a French way,” he explains.

“Sam Taylor is the commissioning editor of The Lady magazine and she writes about the thinly-disguised antics of her Bohemian friends, who never seem to have escaped from their student lives.”

East of Islington was described as “deliciously extravagant” in a four-star review in the Mail on Sunday, as “delightful… an urban Archers” by Boyd Tonkin in the Independent and “a must read” in Time Out.

And there have been compelling comments too about Love in a Warm Climate, which naughtily describes itself as “a novel about the French art of love” – undoubtedly something to take your mind off the financial problems still besetting us.

Already on the fiction list for forthcoming publication in April is The Folly of French Kissing, by Carla McKay, which reveals what goes on behind the shuttered facades of French homes.

This will be followed in June with The Falklands Intercept, by former MI5 spook Crispin Black, a thriller about the relationship between the US and the UK and dealings within Whitehall.

Other prospective titles include Global­isation Laid Bare, introduced by entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, which has contributions by Goldman Sachs head of research Jim O’Neill, Lord Mandelson, Clare Short, Alan Greenspan and former Marks and Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose.

Also on the list are Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality, by Theodore Dalrymple. This unmasks the hidden sentimentality that Dalrymple claims is suffocating public life and ranges from issues such as honour killings and Che Guevara to Romeo and Juliet and the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann.

Some of Martin’s earlier hits are to be reprinted as £7.99 or £8.99 paperbacks to mark Gibson Square’s anniversary decade, among them House of Bush, House of Saud – which was the inspiration for Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 – and Age of Putin, by Yuri Felshtinsky, and George Walden’s Time to Emigrate.

These books prove the point that big is not necessarily beautiful in the world of books. They are books that have proved Martin’s belief in them and their authors, and now have a legacy of their own.

“Most of our titles started life as current affairs books, so you would think they have had their moment in the sun,” says Rynja. “But they have proved to be more enduring.”

• www.gibsonsquare.com