Maverick

Arriving in London on the eve of the Second World War, George Weidenfeld had no money and no standing as an Austrian-Jewish refugee. He went on to reshape the book trade and the wider world of ideas. Under his direction, his firm published Lolita, The Double Helix, The Group and The Hedgehog and the Fox, and he backed writers as varied as Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, J.D. Salinger, Edna O'Brien, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Harold Wilson and Henry Kissinger.

His work as a publisher also placed him among influential people, including George Bush, Ann Getty, Donald Trump and Lyndon B. Johnson. Thomas Harding's book is the first full biography of Weidenfeld. It tells his story candidly, and at times uncomfortably, rather than as a polished tribute. Harding draws on author letters, internal memos and papers from the private files of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which show how a book is actually brought into the world. The subject was also covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time and Vanity Fair over the course of his career.

The book asks whether Weidenfeld deserved his reputation as a gifted salesman, a master networker, a publisher's publisher and a true intellectual. It also considers whether his lifelong drive to be the most celebrated host in the world concealed a deep loneliness, and it traces how he climbed into the social circles of both New York and London. Who the man was beneath the public persona is at the centre of the story.

Harding organises the narrative around twenty books connected with Weidenfeld. Between these chapters, he turns to present-day debates about cancel culture, the right to publish, freedom of speech and whether a work of art can be separated from its creator.