A Life in Fifty Books

A Publisher's Memoir

Anthony Cheetham

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Hardback

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English

Head of Zeus
01 July 2025

Biography: literary; Memoirs; Literature, Poetry & Criticism

'There are good publishers and there are great publishers. And then there’s Anthony Cheetham.' Richard Dawkins

In November 1966, by way of Mexico City, Eton College, Balliol College, Oxford, and a Norwegian raspberry farm, Anthony Cheetham entered the doors of a publishing company for the first time to begin work as a junior editor. Fifty-eight years later he could look back on a career in which he had shaped the landscape of post-war British publishing to a significant degree, having established such prominent and notably successful companies as Century, Orion, Quercus and Head of Zeus, and launched imprints – from Abacus in 1973 to Zephyr in 2017 – that continue to flourish in the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Starting with Homer’s Odyssey and ending with works by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and the German historian Ernst Kantorowicz, Anthony Cheetham has selected fifty books as mileposts with which to map the course of his long and productive career. Many of these are titles that he himself published (Dune, The Thorn Birds, A Suitable Boy, Meetings with Remarkable Trees, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo); some are books he wished he had published (Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time); others are simply masterworks that left an indelible mark on him (The Lord of the Rings, War and Peace).

A Life in Fifty Books is an affectionate and revelatory account of a publishing life remarkable for its longevity, its entrepreneurial energy and for the breadth and catholicity of its output – which runs the gamut of seriousness from academically distinguished works of history, science and philosophy to Confessions of a Window Cleaner. Full of encounters with remarkable individuals as well as extraordinary books and embellished with beautiful photographs of book jackets from the 1950s to the present day, A Life in Fifty Books is an engagingly written survey of an industry which, in its author’s well-chosen words, offers its practitioners ‘…a passport to roam across the entire spectrum of human experience, endeavour and belief’.

By: Anthony Cheetham
Imprint: Head of Zeus
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 220mm, Width: 142mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 440g
ISBN: 9781035912766
ISBN 10: 1035912767
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Anthony Cheetham CBE was born in Mexico City and educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. Over the course of a sixty-year career in book publishing, he has established many of the UK’s most prominent publishing companies including Century, Orion, Quercus and Head of Zeus. He lives in London and Gloucestershire.

Reviews for A Life in Fifty Books: A Publisher's Memoir

There are good publishers and there are great publishers. And then there’s Anthony Cheetham. * Richard Dawkins * Anthony Cheetham is a consummate publisher, superb businessman and a civiliser. * Ben Okri * The most innovative publisher of my lifetime. * Hunter Davies *