For nearly 35 years, H. W. (Harry) Crocker III ran the editorial department at Regnery Publishing—America’s then-leading conservative book publisher—in a storied career that made him an indispensable shaper of the conservative movement of the last half century (and included, for a while, doing double duty as editor of that one-time beacon of the conservative movement, The Conservative Book Club, and taking on journalistic stints as senior editor of The American Spectator, columnist at The National Catholic Register, and much else besides). His authors included everyone from Laura Ingraham to Josh Hawley; from Russell Kirk to Pat Buchanan; from Robert Nisbet to Rich Lowry; from Spencer Klavan to Michael Anton; from Marine drill sergeant R. Lee Ermey to Army general Keith Kellogg; from novelist Stephen Coonts to former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller; from Chuck Norris to Ted Nugent; and huge #1 bestsellers like Unlimited Access, about security breaches in the Clinton White House, and Unfit for Command, which ended John Kerry’s presidential ambitions; all the while maintaining the company’s Gateway series of classics in philosophy, theology, politics, and literature.
But more than that, he has been in the arena of real politics as a political speechwriter, and he has written best-selling histories like Robert E. Lee on Leadership, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, and Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church, and some of the funniest novels you’re likely to come across, from his classic The Old Limey to Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery (which I chose as a Spectator book of the year in 2022) to his current World War II thriller (which is equally full of wit) Kruger’s Korps.
I first met him when I was an editor at Human Events, which then shared office space with Regnery. We have stayed in touch over the years, even though, by his own admission, he now “lives in seclusion in the Deep South.” I recently had a chance to interview him and jumped at it. Here is the result of that exchange.
MULL: You’ve had a colorful career. What’s the “I just met you casually at a cocktail party” version?
CROCKER: Well, I was a frustrated wannabe Marine, disqualified by asthma, who started as a newspaper man (think Kolchak: The Night Stalker—and yes, I miss newspapers) and ended up by a series of fortunate events in book publishing, which, I eventually decided, was exactly where I wanted to be. I came to this bizarre conclusion while living in London, trying to credential myself, academically, to be a war correspondent by studying international relations. Dinesh D’Souza introduced me to Al Regnery, and the rest is history. My only interruption from book publishing was to work as a political speechwriter for Governor Pete Wilson of California, my home state; I also did some other part-time political work, including on the 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush.
MULL: And you worked with lots of politicians at Regnery too.
CROCKER: Yes, including our current president, whom I like very much, by the way. In fact, I take credit for getting him elected. I encouraged Senator Rick Santorum to write a book called Blue Collar Conservatives, which became Trump’s 2016 playbook. You can look it up.
MULL: Is that your favorite publishing story?
CROCKER: Well, I can also take credit for overthrowing the Communist government of Romania—at least up to a point. I worked with Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa, a defector from the Romanian regime, on his book Red Horizons. It was broadcast into Romania and led to the riots that toppled the Communist dictatorship. Working on that book, our phones were tapped, I took a death threat, I was twice interviewed by the FBI, I had bulletproof panels inserted into my briefcase by a military intelligence friend of mine, and so on and so on; very spy vs. spy. Our author had to remain in hiding with his wife; she was the CIA agent who had debriefed him.
MULL: Wow. Were those your favorite authors to work with?
CROCKER: Did Fred Astaire have a favorite dancing partner? Can’t say. But I can tell you that I pray every day for the soul of William Peter Blatty. I worked on his last book, which was titled Finding Peter, about the death of his son Peter and how it affirmed his belief in the reality of life after death; he wanted to offer that as a consolation to others. I just felt a great affinity for him. I’ve never seen or read The Exorcist, but I was a long-time admirer of his work as a humorist, including as a screenwriter for A Shot in the Dark and What Did You Do in the War Daddy? As a writer, I consider myself primarily a humorist, and so did he.
MULL: Do you pray for him for a reason?
CROCKER: No, just affection for him.
MULL: What in the publishing world would surprise the common reader?
CROCKER: How small, profitless, and unforgiving of failure it largely is.
MULL: Does publishing have a future?
CROCKER: No, only as a boutique industry of ever declining importance.
MULL: What’s it like to be an editor who gets his work edited?
CROCKER: That depends on the editor. I’m pretty ruthless with my own stuff, so I welcome every worthy suggestion—and even a few unworthy ones. One unexpected disability of being an editor, at least for me, is not wanting to be “a problem author.”
MULL: What do you hope to achieve by your work?
CROCKER: Well, fame and fortune would be nice, even for a recluse like me. But, whenever I think it was all for nothing, I think of the readers I’ve met who tell me how much my books have meant to them. I even had a former Protestant pastor tell me that my book Triumph convinced him to become a Catholic. William Peter Blatty categorized his last few novels as “apostolic” works. I’d like to think of my books in that way. But for both of us, “apostolic” very much means entertaining readers, not lecturing to them.
MULL: What advice would you give an aspiring writer of the next great American novel?
CROCKER: Find another ambition. No one is looking for, or wants to read, “the next great American novel.”
MULL: Tell me about your latest book, then, Kruger’s Korps, and why everyone should read it.
CROCKER: Because it’s the next great American novel.
MULL: Please.
CROCKER: I think it’s a lot of fun: the Afrika Korps, panzer battles, American spies (I worked by the way on the World War II memoirs of Bill Casey, an OSS officer and director of Central Intelligence under Reagan), a dash of real history, a rumored African dinosaur that could be real history, at least it’s a real legend, and old-fashioned 1940s nostalgia (I’m a huge old movie buff); and, yes, it’s a little apostolic too, with a rosary-praying spy, and a priest who doubles as a secret agent. Have I mentioned it’s a perfect Father’s Day gift?
MULL: You have now. What’s your writing process? Early morning, cup of coffee, 2,000 words by noon? Late night, whisky, burning the midnight oil? Disciplined? Deadlined? Organized chaos?
CROCKER: It’s all discipline, word count, and endless cups of coffee, with a lot of pacing around the room and rehearsing the lines, as if it were a play. Then whisky at night when I mull over the plot.
MULL: Name five fiction books you love. And if you could hang out with any fictional character from a book, who would it be and why?
CROCKER: My own books excluded, I presume.
MULL: Well…
CROCKER: Because I do generally think that my characters—at least the good guys, the heroes—are good company. But I’ll give you two trilogies—so that’s six books—that I really like and that include one character I’d love to have a whisky or two or three with. The first trilogy is The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon. It’s a thinly veiled memoir of his experiences in the First World War. The individual books are Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man; Memoirs of an Infantry Officer; and Sherston’s Progress. They paint a great portrait of what it means to be a gentleman of immense, but unassuming, physical courage. The second trilogy would be Evelyn Waugh’s thinly veiled memoirs of his experiences in the Second World War, The Sword of Honour trilogy. The titles of those books are Men at Arms; Officers and Gentlemen; and Unconditional Surrender. Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, Waugh’s fictionalized version of General Adrian Carton de Wiart, is the man I’d love to drink with. I have a very strong affection for oft-wounded British military heroes, and he is certainly one of the most extraordinary. I don’t often listen to rock music, but when I do, I listen to the Swedish military-history rock band Sabaton, and their tribute to him, “The Unkillable Soldier.”
MULL: Well, thank you, Mr. Crocker. Any final words of advice or wisdom?
CROCKER: Yes, you might also try Sabaton’s “The Last Stand.”
MULL: I’ll check that out.
CROCKER: And keep the faith—and buy the books! Thanks, Teresa.
Teresa Mull is a writer and editor whose work has appeared on several RealClear verticals.
