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OBITUARY GILLON AITKEN


04.11.16 www.thebookseller.com


Gillon Aitken remembered


Writer and former publisher Andrew Rosenheim reflects on the legacy of a shapeshifting publishing talent who worked as both a publisher and agent


G


illon Aitken, who has died at the age of 78, was a major figure in British publishing for more than five decades. Born in


India during the last years of the British Raj, he was despatched to England at a very young age. He was eventually sent to Surrey independent school Charterhouse, which he disliked and left early. He then attended a peculiar school where, he recalled, the only rule was that you had to dress for dinner. Yet a teacher there first inspired his life-long, voracious reading; he was to take great satisfaction when years later he sold her book on Wittgenstein to OUP. Called up for National Service, he was sent


to Crail [known for its Joint Services School for Linguists in the 1950s], where he was taught Russian alongside Peter Carson, later editor-in- chief of Penguin. Their training led many people to suppose the two had been spies, which in Carson’s case was untrue; with Gillon, because of a subsequent posting to Berlin and his own circumspection, it seemed more plausible. He worked first as a publisher, at Chapman


Hall, where he is said to have been the recipient of the last letter Evelyn Waugh ever wrote. After a year at Hodder & Stoughton, he moved briefly into agenting with Anthony Sheil, before, in 1971, becoming the managing director of Hamish Hamilton at the young age of 32. But Gillon was always keen to cut his own trail, and set up again as an agent in 1977—and found his métier. He operated with several different partners, most notably with Andrew Wylie for a decade and, subsequently, Clare Alexander. The agency became arguably the leading representative of quality writing in the English- speaking world. Concentrating chiefly on fiction, Gillon had an unerring eye for what makes a book work, and for what publishers could afford to pay. Despite his financial sharpness, he kept on many writers whose earnings could never even pay the office coffee bill. The original Golden Age for the agency was undoubtedly the partnership with Wylie, who was based in New York. For a time the pair seemed to have a stranglehold on all the living writers of note—and the literary estates of most dead ones too. It was not to last. The pair fell out, perhaps inevitable with two such


strong-willed characters. Given the size of the US market, many of the agency’s stars went west with Wylie, though Gillon extracted a high price for the severance. He himself seemed equable about the split; when people ventured any sour assessment of his former partner, Gillon would smile and half-demur: “We had a lot of fun together.” He retained, in any case, much of the cream of the British writing world—including Pat Barker, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Fielding, Germaine Greer, Edward St Aubyn and, until recently, V S Naipaul. His appointment of Alexander in 1998 enriched the business, as she brought with her great publishing experience, enormous energy and, in time, a host of bestselling writers. The agency prospered in its quaint quarters on Fernshaw Road in Chelsea, then in modern offices above the Pan Macmillan bookshop, and latterly in the rejuvenated area near King’s Cross. A realist, Gillon would temper his authors’ wilder expectations, yet he was close to them and always supportive. His relations with publishers were rigorous but also cordial; he saw no advantage in conducting business adversarially. Having bought Charles Moore’s biography of


Baroness Thatcher from Gillon for a singularly large advance, I later asked him whether I had overpaid. “Of course,” he replied. Then he added with a laugh, “but it will come good for you in the end.”


Gillon embodied seemingly intriguing


contradictions that puzzled even his closest friends. Gillon was clever, widely read, a translator of Pushkin—yet never went to university. Old- school and slightly grand, he disliked vulgarity but had a deep appreciation of the absurd. A daunting, sometimes even intimidating figure—not least because of his height and sonorous voice—he was nonetheless publicity averse, unusual in a part of the book world where egos run large. This reserve often masked simple shyness: he once asked me to accompany him to a party given by another of his writers because he might “not know anybody there”. His last years were sadly marked by the tragic death of his only child, Charlotte, a loss which coupled with his own illness was met with a quiet fortitude that was characteristic of this remarkable man.


Aitken, born 29th March 1938, died 28th October 2016.


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