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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor for The Spectator.

My guest this week is Anthony Cheatham, who is one of the legends of late 20th century and

early 21st century publishing.

And he's just published a memoir called A Life in 50 Books of Publishers Memoir.

Anthony, welcome.

If it's a life of 50 books, let's start with page one.

How did you get into publishing?

How did the business that you've made your career first, as it were, get its teeth into you?

I think I simply saw an ad somewhere.

My father was a diplomat, and he was terribly disappointed that I'd actually opted for

going into publishing rather than following him into the diplomatic service.

And actually, I'm very glad to have a parent who did all those things because it gave me a chance to, I'm fluent in German, he made me learn French. We were also in Hungary, but I never learned in all than two words.

Cosa Chocolon, which means I kiss your hand. So, but the main virtue of publishing is do you actually get paid money to read books,

which I think is a pretty perfect situation?

Well, it certainly is.

I mean, one of the startling things about this book is, you know,

because I think of you, you know, in your later career as having headed up, you know,

PRH and Century and Orion and these great

sort of commercial literary imprints, that you've got a sort of, your personal reading is really

...