Christopher MacLehose

Christopher Colin MacLehose CBE[1] (born 1940)[2] is a British publisher who in 2008 founded the MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Books. He was previously notable as publisher of Harvill Press (from 1984 to 2004),[3][4][5] where his successes included bringing out the stories of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford for the first time in Britain.[6] Having published works translated from more than 34 languages,[7] MacLehose has been referred to as "the champion of translated fiction"[8] and as "British publishing's doyen of literature in translation".[9] He is generally credited with introducing to an English-speaking readership the best-selling Swedish author Stieg Larsson[10][11][12][13] and other prize-winning authors, among them Sergio De La Pava, who has described MacLehose as "an outsize figure literally and figuratively – that's an individual who has devoted his life to literature".[14]

Christopher MacLehose
Born
Christopher Colin MacLehose

1940
Edinburgh, Scotland
EducationShrewsbury School;
Worcester College, Oxford University
OccupationPublisher

Early life

Christopher MacLehose was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in July 1940 into a family that was involved with the book trade as printers, booksellers and publishers, which he has described as "seven generations, all of them second sons".[2] He was educated at Shrewsbury School (1953–58),[15] and read history at Worcester College, Oxford University.[16]

Career

MacLehose took a job at the Glasgow Herald, where he hoped to stay for six months to gain the experience that would enable him to work for the recently founded Independent Television News; however, his ambitions changed direction after a few weeks: "I realised ... I wanted to work with language and words," MacLehose said in a 2012 interview.[2] So he worked in the editorial office of the family printing factory by day, while freelancing by night for The Herald writing reviews and obituaries.[2] Eventually, he was offered employment as literary editor of The Scotsman, following which he moved in 1967 to London and went into book publishing, initially as an editor at the Cresset Press (part of the Barrie Group), with P. G. Wodehouse among his authors,[2][8] as well as George MacDonald Fraser of Flashman fame, who had been the features editor of the Glasgow Herald when MacLehose was there.[17] MacLehose subsequently became editorial director of Chatto & Windus, and then editor-in-chief of William Collins.[18][19]

In 1984 MacLehose took charge of the Harvill imprint, of which he was publisher for the next 20 years, with a well respected list that specialised in translation and included such titles as Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.[8] In 1995 MacLehose led a management buy-out of Harvill and for the following seven years characterised the company as "a bridge across cultures",[20] counting among his authors Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, W. G. Sebald, José Saramago, Georges Perec, Claudio Magris and P. O. Enquist.[8][21] In 1992 the company was bought by Random House[22][23] and two years later MacLehose left.[8]

He then set up the MacLehose Press, whose motto is "Read the World",[24] as "an independently minded imprint" of Quercus Books (itself founded in 2004).[25][26][27] The first titles were published in January 2008,[28] and among these was the best-selling psychological thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Swedish author Stieg Larsson.[29] Other international authors published by MacLehose Press include Bernardo Atxaga,[30] Dulce Maria Cardoso,[31] Philippe Claudel,[32] Otto de Kat, Maylis de Kerangal, Virginie Despentes, Joël Dicker,[33][34] Sophie Divry, Per Olov Enquist, Roy Jacobsen, Jaan Kross, Andrey Kurkov, David Lagercrantz, Pierre Lemaitre, Élmer Mendoza, Patrick Modiano, Marie NDiaye, Daniel Pennac, Lydie Salvayre, Żanna Słoniowska, and Valerio Varesi.[35][36]

With "a reputation as a master at finding foreign fiction by writers such as Henning Mankell and Haruki Murakami and turning them into English language hits",[37] MacLehose has said: "When I first came into publishing, there was André Deutsch, Fredric Warburg, Ernest Hecht, Manya Harari, George Weidenfeld – a generation of multilingual people who came to England bringing the assumption that books that had to be translated were no different.... You simply published the best you could find and if you had to translate them, you just got on with it."[38]

On 30 October 2020, MacLehose Press announced that MacLehose had chosen to leave the imprint. Associate publisher Katharina Bielenberg will take over as publisher at the end of the year.[39][40]

Awards and honours

In 2006 MacLehose received the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award for International Publishing.[41][42]

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the publishing industry in the 2011 New Year Honours.[43][44]

In 2016 he was awarded the Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature.[45]

References
  1. "Honours List: Order of the British Empire, CBE" Archived 26 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 31 December 2010.
  2. Nicholas Wroe, "Christopher MacLehose: A life in publishing" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 28 December 2012.
  3. "Darja Marinšek presents Christopher MacLehose, MacLehose Press" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Frankfurter Buchmesse, 2016.
  4. Christopher MacLehose profile Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine at London Book Fair.
  5. Christopher MacLehose, "A Publisher’s Vision" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, EnterText 4.3 Supplement.
  6. Sebastian Faulks, "My week" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Observer, 12 April 2009.
  7. "MacLehose Press Publishing Programme" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Creative Europe Desk UK.
  8. Anthony Gardner, "Christopher MacLehose: The champion of translated fiction who struck it rich with Stieg Larsson" Archived 25 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine, 2010.
  9. The Literator, "Cover Stories: Christopher MacLehose" Archived 26 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 28 September 2006.
  10. Joshua Melvin, "French crime fiction set to eclipse Scandi-noir" Archived 27 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, AFP–The Local, 20 February 2014.
  11. Helen Rowe, "After ScandiNoir, French are new crime fiction stars" Archived 27 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, DAWN, 24 February 2014.
  12. Gaby Wood, "How Karl Ove Knausgaard and Elena Ferrante won us over" Archived 22 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2016.
  13. Henry Williams, "Old is the new young, which is great news for idlers like me" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Spectator, 3 August 2016.
  14. Susanna Rustin, "Sergio De La Pava: 'My book's not perfect, but it's what I set out to do. I wanted it to have a propulsive, angry core'" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 27 June 2014.
  15. The Salopian, Issue 148, Summer 2011, p. 41.
  16. "MacLehose, Christopher Colin" Archived 30 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Who's Who & Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 2014. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  17. Christopher MacLehose, "The derring-do that created Flashman" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Spectator, 24 May 2014.
  18. Hrvoje Bozicevic, "The life and death of Harvill Press: Save the Leopard!" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Literature & Translation, UNESCO, 17 November 2004.
  19. Lucinda Byatt, "At two ends of the publishing continuum: Harvill Secker’s celebrates its (cumulative) centenary and Vagabond Voices" Archived 6 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, 1 October 2009.
  20. Andrew Franklin, "From Small Beginnings" Archived 1 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 11 May 1996.
  21. Baret Magariani, "Patrician hauteur. Interview – Christopher MacLehose" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, New Statesman, 26 February 1999.
  22. "Harvill press joins The Random House Group" Archived 28 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, PR Newswire.
  23. Rod Stewart, "Adapting to acquisition" Archived 29 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Bookseller, 3 August 2003.
  24. Sam Leith, "Leith on language: Found in translation" Archived 31 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Prospect, 16 March 2017 (April issue).
  25. Michael Thwaite, "MacLehose joins with Quercus" Archived 28 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Ready Steady Book, 21 September 2006.
  26. "ABOUT MACLEHOSE PRESS". MacLehose Press. Archived from the original on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  27. "About us" Archived 28 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Quercus.
  28. Joshua Farrington, "MacLehose Press celebrates fifth anniversary" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Bookseller, 21 December 2012.
  29. "What publishers can do when a best-selling author dies" Archived 10 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, 23 December 2013.
  30. "A Basque writer contemplates America" Archived 25 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Economist, 10 August 2017.
  31. "#RivetingReviews: Rosie Goldsmith reviews THE RETURN by Dulce Maria Cardoso" Archived 21 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine, European Literature Network, 15 September 2017.
  32. Boyd Tonkin, "Philippe Claudel wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize" Archived 26 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 13 May 2010.
  33. Liz Bury, "Dan Brown-trumping French bestseller due in English next year" Archived 25 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 6 December 2013.
  34. Katherine Cowdrey"'Harry Quebert' companion novel to MacLehose" Archived 25 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Bookseller, 19 July 2016.
  35. Ian Thomson, "Modern Italy’s heart of darkness" Archived 26 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Spectator, 26 March 2016.
  36. "Books" Archived 25 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, MacLehose Press.
  37. Nick Clark, "The publishing house that Stieg Larsson built" Archived 19 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 5 August 2010.
  38. Andrew Jack, "Translators: Publishing’s unsung heroes at work" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Financial Times, 6 October 201.
  39. Katherine Cowdrey (30 October 2020). "Christopher MacLehose steps back from MacLehose Press after 13 years | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  40. Erin Somers (30 October 2020). "People, Etc". Publishers Lunch. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  41. "Lifetime Achievement Award" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Trilogy, 12 January 2005.
  42. Lifetime Achievement Award, London Book Fair.
  43. "New Year Honours—United Kingdom" Archived 7 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The London Gazette, 31 December 2010, Supplement No. 1, p. 8.
  44. Graeme Neill, "Weidenfeld and MacLehose lauded in New Year's Honours list" Archived 26 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Bookseller, 4 January 2011.
  45. "The Benson Medal" Archived 21 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Royal Society of Literature.
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