ADAMSON, J. Max Reinhardt. Palgrave Macmillan. 2009.

ADAMSON, J. Max Reinhardt. Palgrave Macmillan. 2009.

Hardback, 240pp., NEW, Max Reinhardt owned The Bodley Head from 1957 to 1987, and many smaller publishing houses like The Nonesuch Press and Reinhardt Books. Written largely from papers in his private archive, this account of his life contains many stories about his authors, among them Graham Greene (whose contribution to The Bodley Head has never been fully credited), G.B. Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Georgette Heyer, Alistair Cooke and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Among his close friends were also many actors; he published his first books with Ralph Richardson and Anthony Quayle, and he left his mark on RADA, where he was on the council for thirty years. One of Reinhardt's wisest publishing decisions was to support children's books and to hire Judy Taylor to build for The Bodley Head one of the finest children's lists in the business. Max Reinhardt: A Life in Publishing tells the story of a remarkable man and, as it does, illuminates the trajectory of British publishing in the second half of the twentieth century.
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