Douglas Cleverdon

Thomas Douglas James Cleverdon (17 January 1903 – 1 October 1987) was an English radio producer and bookseller. In both fields he was associated with numerous leading cultural figures.

He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Jesus College, Oxford. He then set up a bookshop in Bristol. From there he also published.

His first book published was a collection of engravings by Eric Gill, who later made a Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon. In 1927 he commissioned David Jones to make a set of copper engravings for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.. Other books published include Vigils by Siegfried Sassoon, Uncle Doherty by T.F. Powys and Art and Love with engravings by Gill. He published a succession of very finely printed catalogues of books for sale from the bookshop, ranging from early Caxton Press first editions of Jane Austen to modern first editions by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot.

In 1939 he joined the BBC, where he co-created The Brains Trust with fellow producer Howard Thomas. From 1945 he was in the department headed by Laurence Gilliam. Later, in 1948, Cleverdon would adapt and produce David Jones's major poem In Parenthesis for radio, with Richard Burton and Dylan Thomas, for BBC Radio's Third Programme. In 1954 Cleverdon produced Under Milk Wood, the premier of the Dylan Thomas dramatic poem; according to Jenny Abramsky it had taken seven years to persuade Thomas to write it. At around this time he also worked with Henry Reed on the Hilda Tablet cycle of plays.

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