Giles Gordon
| Giles Gordon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Giles Alexander Esmé Gordon 23 May 1940 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 14 November 2003 (aged 63) Edinburgh, Scotland |
Giles Alexander Esmé Gordon (23 May 1940 – 14 November 2003) was a Scottish literary agent and writer, based for most of his career in London.
The son of (Alexander) Esmé Gordon (1910-1993), an architect and Honorary Secretary (1973–78) of the Royal Scottish Academy and his wife Betsy, Gordon was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Edinburgh Academy, an independent day school. Here he acted in school productions, including Iolanthe, with future broadcaster Gordon Honeycombe, among others. After school, where he persistently failed examinations, he attended, for a time, Edinburgh College of Art, where his father lectured on architecture.
In 1959, he joined the Edinburgh publisher Oliver and Boyd as a trainee; he remained as their employee for nearly four years. Following this, he moved to London in 1962, and was advertising manager for Secker & Warburg for a year, editor at Hutchinson in 1966 and then of the plays list at Penguin, where he launched the Penguin Modern Playwrights series. He became editorial director at Gollancz in 1967 and stayed for five years, abolishing the uniform style in which the company's books had previously appeared. At this time he interviewed playwrights for the Transatlantic Review.
In 1972, he clashed with the directors at Gollancz over their desire to remove some of the sex from a novel by Dennis Potter, and joined agent Anthony Shiel, later Sheil Land Associates, aiming to improve the terms for authors. Among the writers he represented at one time or another were Peter Ackroyd, John Fowles, Allan Massie, Penelope Mortimer, Vikram Seth, Sue Townsend, Barry Unsworth and Fay Weldon.
...
Wikipedia