VIVID SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES FROM THE LAST GREAT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER OF HIS GENERATION

A personal view from one of the most colourful personalities on London’s cultural scene over the past four decades

This engaging and illuminating potpourri of vignettes selected from Naim Attallah’s fifteen books of memoirs and interviews, along with a sprinkling of blog posts, gives a taste of late 20th century London culture and entertainingly evokes the shifting fortunes of publishing life over the past forty years.

In Memories, Attallah not only writes about his contemporaries at length, but is also written about by them and he is never shy in expressing the highs and lows of his different relationships with a catalogue of cultural luminaries, many of whom are still close friends of his to this day. These range from violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin to the late Christina Foyle, owner of Foyles; jeweller Tomasz Starzewski to artist Emma Sergeant and the former chairman of Condé Nast Britain, Nicholas Coleridge.

As the chairman of Quartet and former owner of the Women’s Press, Naim has published a diverse roll call of notable literary names throughout the years, including Angela Carter, Leni Riefenstahl, Annie Ernaux, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Thomas Bernhard, to name but a few. Attallah was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to literature and the arts.

Naim Attallah is the chairman of Quartet Books. The former CEO of the Asprey Group also co-founded the Academy Club with Auberon Waugh, supported the Literary Review and The Oldie for many years and has written three volumes of autobiography, as well as been involved in numerous productions for the theatre, cinema and television. He lives in London.