Editing Stephen Potter (section)

===''Gamesmanship'' and freelance writing===
A ten-day power-cut at the beginning of 1947 prevented any broadcasting and gave Potter the opportunity to dash off a book. To the despair of his publisher he was a far from methodical author: every Potter manuscript was "a mass of dirty bits of paper, vilely typed, corrected in illegible [[ballpoint pen|biro]], episodic and half-revised."<ref>Hart-Davis, Volume 4, Letter of 7 February 1959</ref> This book, ''The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating'', illustrated by Frank Wilson, was published in 1947, and sold prodigiously.<ref name="vqr">Lowrey, Burling, [http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1993/autumn/lowrey-timelessness/ "The Timelessness of Stephen Potter's Gamesmanship"], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090907172010/http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1993/autumn/lowrey-timelessness/ |date=7 September 2009 }} ''Virginia Quarterly Review'', Autumn 1993, pp.718–26</ref><ref name=rhd/>

It was the first of his series of books purporting to teach ploys for manipulating one's associates, making them feel inferior and thus gaining the status of being one-up on them. From this book, the term "Gamesmanship" entered the English language. Potter said that he was introduced to the technique by [[C. E. M. Joad]] during a game of tennis in which Joad and Potter were struggling against two fit young students. Joad politely requested the students to state clearly whether a ball had landed in or out (when in truth it was so obviously out that they had not thought it necessary to say so). This nonplussed the students, who wondered if their sportsmanship was in question; they became so edgy that they lost the match.<ref name=gale>[http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&o=DataType&n=10&l=d&c=1&locID=wes_ttda&secondary=false&u=CA&t=KW&s=2&NA=Stephen+Potter, "Potter, Stephen"], ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2003, accessed 22 May 2010 (requires subscription)</ref> With the success of ''Gamesmanship'', Potter left the BBC in 1949, ended his existing journalistic commitments, and briefly became editor of a weekly, ''[[Leader Magazine]]''.<ref>Sleeve notes for the Penguin edition of ''The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship''</ref> The magazine closed in 1950, and thereafter he was a freelance writer for the rest of his life.<ref name=dnb/>

Potter followed up the success of Gamesmanship, extending the basic idea to many other aspects of life, in ''Some Notes on Lifemanship'' (1950), which was another big seller.<ref name=gale/> In "Lifemanship" Potter extended the principles of gamesmanship to courtship ("Woomanship"), literature ("Writermanship") and pastimes ("Conversationship"). Thus for example the reader is enjoined, "never forget the uses of Lowbrowmanship in conversation&nbsp;... LOWBROWMAN: Oh, I don't know, I rather like a good bit of old-fashioned vulgarity. And I'm awfully sorry but I like leg shows. If the Lowbrowman happens to be a Professor of Aesthetics&nbsp;... his remark is all the more irritating".<ref>Stephen Potter, ''Some Notes on Lifemanship'' (London 1950) p. 26</ref> A related gambit for the journalist was ' ''Daily Mirrorship''&nbsp;... an unaffected love of tremendously ordinary and homely things like [[Danny Kaye]], mild and bitter, the ''Daily Mirror'', the Bertram Mills circus and [[Rita Hayworth]]".<ref>Potter, ''Lifemanship'' p. 77</ref> Potter mentions in passing how "in the last of my Bude lectures I spoke of Gamesmanship and Shakespeare, where most of my remarks referred to Footnote Play".<ref>Potter, ''Lifemanship'' p. 123</ref> His notes on Donmanship refer to the "art of Criticising without Actually Listening".<ref>Potter, ''Lifemanship'' p. 91</ref>

In his notes on Woomanship, Potter expresses surprise that "twelve times as many workers volunteered to send in reports on Woomanship as on any other subject".<ref>Potter, ''Lifemanship'' p. 53</ref> In mixed gamesmanship, for a man "a good working knowledge of the Chivalry Gambit is essential"; a woman's counter to "the least signs of trying the 'I have long adored you from afar' move", is to "treat it immediately as a formal proposal of marriage ''which you shyly accept''. This is one of the most devastating, the most match-winning, counters in the whole realm of gamesmanship".<ref>Potter, ''Lifemanship'' pp. 116–7</ref>

In 1951 Potter and his wife moved to [[Suffolk]], to the Red House in [[Aldeburgh]]. The most famous local residents were [[Benjamin Britten]] and [[Peter Pears]], with whom the Potters quickly became friendly. They got involved with the running of Britten's [[Aldeburgh Festival]], and "every summer Britten, Peter Pears, and the Potters formed the nucleus of countless tennis parties on the grass court at the Red House."<ref name=dnb2/> In 1954, Potter asked his wife for a divorce. She consented, and he moved away from Aldeburgh. Finding the Red House too large and expensive for one person, Mary Potter agreed to exchange houses with Britten and Pears, who moved into the Red House, with which they were associated for the rest of their lives and beyond.<ref name=dnb2/><ref>See [http://www.brittenpears.org/?page=about/redHouse the Britten-Pears Foundation website]</ref> In 1955, after nearly 30 years of marriage, the Potters' divorce was finalised, and he remarried, to [[Heather Jenner]], the founder of The Marriage Bureau. Their only child, Luke, was born the following year.<ref name=dnb/>

A second successor to ''Gamesmanship'' was published as ''[[One-upmanship|One-Upmanship]]'' (1952). Potter had become well enough known overseas to be invited to give a literary lecture tour of America. He described his experiences in ''Potter on America'' (1956), which received a long and complimentary review in ''The Times Literary Supplement'': "Mr. Potter's private army of Lifemen will need no recommendation to this latest frolic&nbsp;.... It is a pleasure to discover or rediscover the United States in this company, for the author is the most literate of humorists."<ref>''The Times Literary Supplement'', 14 December 1956, p. 752</ref>

A third sequel to ''Gamesmanship'', was published in 1958 under the title of ''Supermanship''. Its publisher, [[Rupert Hart-Davis]], privately wrote of the book, "''Gamesmanship'' made me laugh a lot, and its two successors were just good enough (all three still sell prodigiously), but the world has moved (deathwards, you may say) in the last ten years, and Potter hasn't budged an inch. In truth the joke is played out, but he won't face the fact. This manuscript consists of a bunch of marginal articles, written during the past six years and slung together with the minimum of care."<ref name=rhd>Hart-Davis, Volume 3, Letter of 13 April 1958</ref> Some critics agreed. ''[[The New Yorker]]'' commented, "his methods and the point of view behind them don't seem as funny or as sharp as they once did, possibly because they are no longer surprising, or possibly because he is getting a little tired of his own joke." But [[Edmund Wilson]] remained a fan of Potter, praising "the brevity and compactness of the presentation. As in any practical manual, the principles are stated and concisely illustrated. Nothing goes on too long."<ref name=gale/>