Another Lost World

I’m not sure they make publishers like this anymore. Alas. As is so often the case we may count on the Daily Telegraph’s exquisite obituaries page to provide the details. Sic transit gloria mundi and all the rest of it.

Anthony Blond, who has died aged 79, was a gentleman publisher from an age when business was conducted in dusty garrets and promising authors were given small retainers to allow them to find their muse. Charismatic, daring and outrageous, Blond collected talents as diverse as Harold Robbins and Jean Genet, Spike Milligan and Graham Greene. He was the first to spot the potential of Jennifer Paterson (of the Two Fat Ladies), and was an early director of Private Eye, of whose bank account he was a guarantor. Of the 70 or so writers to whom Blond gave their first chance, he became most closely associated with Simon Raven, whose books he published throughout his literary career.