THE THEOLOGICAL BOOK REVIEW was the brainchild of Patrick Lamb, a young Roman Catholic on the staff of USPG and a professional librarian. That was in 1988. It ran to 36 pages and reflected the early attempts at Desktop Publishing.
It arose from Patrick’s conviction that libraries form an indispensable part of the infrastructure which supports theological education, whether for the clergy or the laity, and the problem in the developing world was very largely that librarians and faculty in the colleges found it very difficult to know what was coming on the market. The more academic books could be anything up to two years old before reviews appeared in Third World academic journals by which time the publisher no longer had any on his shelves. Gone were the days when he was prepared to hold stock for anything up to 20 years. So the need was for a tool a tool which enabled librarians and others to know what was published and for what market rather than attempt a full critique.
Reviewers were instructed to identify the appropriate market, to be descriptive rather than critical, to avoid simply copying the publishers’ blurb, and to focus on the needs of librarians rather than theologians, leaving the librarians to pass on the relevant information to the appropriate people.
Titles from 40 publishers, mainly UK and USA, appeared in the first issue. All titles were to be listed within three months of publication, a standard of urgency and perfection which has certainly slipped over the years but by no means as far as one might have expected.
Colleges, for the most part lacking either funds or foreign currency, were unable to pay for it and since a substantial subsidy was needed to get it off the ground this is where Feed the Minds came in. At the same time, realising that there was a useful UK market it was decided to put on a fair cover price and hope over the years to recoup some of the losses, an ideal which at least enabled the journal to get off the ground but had little chance of achieving financial success. Patrick was honorary editor and manager.
When in 1991 a sudden and unexpected change of job necessitated Patrick's resignation the editorship passed to Charles Elliott and Cambridge until February 1995 after which Leslie Houlden took it on and had some good ideas for development, never implemented because the funds were not available. Subsequently the responsibility and much of the work passed to Olga Davies in the FTM office prior to its transfer first to Ian Markham and then to Kenneth Newport at Liverpool Hope University which already had contact with many institutions in the developing world and an enthusiasm to make it less western by relating it more closely to that world through their overseas contacts. By the beginning of the 21st century the number of publishers and the pages had virtually doubled.