I was born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1940. I was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. I have been married to the painter, Lynette Hemmant, for over 48 years. I worked briefly in television and for Thames and Hudson, the art publishers. Since 1967, I have been at various times and in various combinations: writer and translator (20 years), photographer (including two and a half years regular freelancing for BBC TV Current Affairs), lecturer (21 years), copywriter for and associate of Adrian Knowles Associates, book packager, publishing and marketing consultant, reviewer and occasional feature writer. I have been a literary agent for 29 years and chairman of Dedalus, publishers of literary fiction, for nearly 28.
I was on the Executive Council of the Writers' Guild (1982-5), chairman of the Copyright Licensing Agency (1988-90), vice-chairman of the British Copyright Council for six years and chairman of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (2001-2004).
I speak (with varying degrees of proficiency) English, Estonian, French, German and Italian.
James Tennant
James Tennant works for Dalkey Archive Press and as contributing editor to The White Review. He worked as a ghost writer based in Geneva for two and a half years, and has lived and studied in Latin America and Spain. His writing has appeared in the Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, Modern Poetry in Translation.
Maya Jaggi
MAYA JAGGI is an award-winning cultural journalist and an influential critic on international literature. Her arts profiles in the Guardian Review over a decade are credited with enhancing understanding of world writers, from Gunter Grass, Umberto Eco and Jose Saramago to Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison and Mario Vargas Llosa - as well as British figures such as Jeanette Winterson and Sir Tom Stoppard. The late critic Professor Edward Said described her interview with him as 'in a class of its own'. She writes for periodicals including the Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, Economist and BookForum (New York), and her interviews have appeared in books including Lives and Works, Writing Across Worlds and Women of the Revolution. She is also a presenter, and contributes to BBC radio and television. She has been a judge of literary awards including the Orange prize, the David Cohen, the Caine, the Commonwealth Writers prize and the Saif Ghobash-Banipal prize for Arabic literary translation, and is a judge of this year’s Harvill Secker/Foyles Young Translators’ Prize. She was educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, and is an Associate Fellow of Warwick University and a member of English PEN's Writers in Prison committee.
Gary Mckeone
Gary McKeone was Literature Director at Arts Council England from 1995-2006. Before that he worked with Field Day Theatre Company in Ireland and at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank. He is currently Chair of the Poetry Archive and the recently created Poetry Translation Centre and is also involved with a number of other literature organisations in England. Originally from Derry, N.Ireland he has written for the Guardian and Independent newspapers and currently works as Programme Director at St George’s House, Windsor Castle.
Rosalind Harvey
Rosalind Harvey has lived in Lima and Norwich, where she fell in love with Spanish and translation, respectively. She now lives in east London, where she translates Hispanic fiction. She is the co-translator, with Anne McLean, of Hector Abad’s prize-winning memoir Oblivion, is currently co-translating Dublinesca, the latest novel by Enrique Vila-Matas, and her translation of Juan Villalobos’ novel Fiesta en la madriguera will be out in September.For three months in the autumn she will be one of two translators-in-residence at the Free Word centre in London
David Mantero
David Mantero was born in Malaga in 1978 and studied Philosophy, graduating in 2000. After a year working for Malaga University, he came to spend a summer in London and it will soon be 10 years since that. Having worked at some odd jobs, at some point he decided that if he was going to spend so much of his spare time in bookshops he might as well get paid for it. Somehow he got a job at Stanfords where he has been the London Shop Manager for the last five years and has recently been appointed Head Buyer. Stanfords is one of the world’s best known map and travel book specialists.
"35Muertos is a sprawling, fast-paced novel set in Colombia’s recent past and dealing with the country’s history of an epidemic of violence. I think anyone who enjoys García Márquez would like it.” (Rosalind Harvey)
“Mae West y Yo tackles the theme of death and mortality from an unusual perspective, showing how humour and imagination can help when facing adversity, whilst also presenting a gentle critique of the privileged lives of Spain’s upper-middle classes.” (Catherine Mansfield)
“A truly stunning work with a beautiful stillness to it, very few potential translation issues, and which deserves to be in as many languages as possible. “(Rosalind Harvey)
“Filled with original touches and surprising twists and turns, the book is a both a gloomy but playful metaphor for Argentina’s recent history, delving into themes such as the continually thwarted aspirations of the middle classes, corruption and patriarchal ideals, and also an exhilarating but weird existential road trip.” (Kit Maude)
“The Door with Three Locks” is attractive, accessible, entertaining, fascinating, surprising and by turns exciting and cute. It is a great introduction to the astonishing subject of quantum physics. (Catherine Forrest)
“This seemed to me a jewel of a book. As the plot summary shows, nothing much happens, but the writing brilliantly conveys the wild imaginings of a mind just on the verge of adulthood, when that world is still a mystery but is endlessly fascinating, even if there is no explanation.” (Nick Caistor)
“Aimed at 7, 8 & 9-year-olds, El Señor H is great fun, with some old-fashioned public service type information also cleverly, undidactically injected along the way. The illustrations are colourful, expressive, many of them full bleed on the page”. (Tom Bunstead)
“Barba’s short novel is an intense examination of inner life and one’s conscious and subconscious response to situations, looks, gestures and words.” (Rosalind Harvey)
“This is a ground-breaking work by one of Spain’s foremost contemporary historians. It is based on extensive original research, which has uncovered material of clear international significance. “(Kirsty Hooper)
“Alfonso Zapico’s graphic novel Dublinés provides a witty and intuitive guide to the life and times of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. Required reading for anyone who believes that Joyce is too serious for them”. (Lise Jones)
“Black Bread is an exceptional novel. Written in striking literary language, it describes post-war life in Catalonia through the eyes of a young boy who doesn’t understand the compromises the adults have to reach in order to survive.” (Peter Bush)
“Finding a new way oflooking at this iconic figure was an ambitious project which has been beautifully accomplished by Hernández and Torres in La Huella de Lorca.” (Lise jones)
