Barry Holmes, Cassell editor for Poems on the Underground, dies

Barry Holmes, former senior commissioning editor at Cassell, has died after a long illness. 

Holmes, who passed away on 5th December, was responsible for the Poems on the Underground series of books, the first volume of which appeared in 1991. 

Following spells at Foyles and Gordon & Gotch, he joined the sales team at Studio Vista in 1965, after which he became part of the Cassell sales and marketing force following spells at Crowell, Collier and Macmillan. He was appointed deputy group marketing manager in 1973, and later promoted to director of sales and marketing, before moving into a commissioning role in the mid-1980s. His main focus was non-fiction, in spite of the success of the Poems on the Underground series he oversaw. He retired in 2005.

Nigel Wilcockson, publishing director at Random House Books, previously senior commissioning editor at Cassell during the mid-1990s, paid tribute to Holmes for his "kindness, wit, wisdom and humanity" and said that while Cassell had spent the last decades of the 20th century in a state of flux (moving office several times before becoming part of the Orion Group) "the one constant was Barry Holmes".

"Barry joined the company as a salesman in the days when Cassell’s main claim to fame was that it was Churchill’s publisher. Such was his versatility, however, that he later shifted effortlessly to commissioning. And such was his flair that he proceeded to make a success even of books with which he had no apparent affinity. Owner of the worst-tended office plants in global publishing, he looked after the gardening list. Later, this least warlike of men ran Cassell’s extensive military list. He dispatched both tasks with aplomb," said Wilcockson.

"Barry was a company man, but not a corporate one. He regarded form-filling and financial projections as a waste of time and, as the sales department became more central to decision-making, took to describing them as the Sales Prevention Department. He was humorously and openly cynical about Modern Management Techniques.

"But he was forgiven by the High-Ups because he was so good at everything he did. He ran his lists brilliantly. He got on well with his authors. He was the best sales conference presenter I’ve ever encountered, offering wittily enthusiastic or comically despairing outlines of forthcoming books, all without the aid of notes. Invited on air by Radio 2 presenter Derek Jameson to talk about one of the jewels in Cassell’s crown – Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable – he proved so popular that he was invited back again and again. Sales soared.

"To my mind his finest achievement was the Poems on the Underground series of books. Success always seems inevitable after the event, but rarely so at the time, and there must have been many who intoned the time-honoured mantra ‘Poetry books don’t sell’. Barry pushed ahead regardless, lavished attention on design and printing, and oversaw one of the great publishing triumphs of the nineties.

"An intensely modest, rather private man, Barry didn’t actively seek friendship. But then he didn’t need to. Friendship found him. His colleagues relished his kindness, wit, wisdom and humanity, and we are all greatly saddened that he has gone. We offer our deepest sympathies to his wife Sue, and to his children and grandchildren."

Judith Chernaik, founder and co-editor of Poems on the Underground, called him "the most patient, genial and meticulous of editors, a delightful man of immense tact and charm".

She said: "Barry Holmes, the much-loved editor at Cassell Publishers, was entirely responsible for returning our tube poems to the printed page as a bestselling poetry anthology. After we had been displaying poems on the tube for five years, I approached every poetry publisher in London with a proposal for 100 Poems on the Underground, only to be turned down by all of them. I met Barry at a London Transport celebration of a big coffee table book, Art on the Underground, which he had edited for Cassell. He thought 100 Poems on the Underground was a rather attractive idea, and within a few months the paperback was in bookshops, often displayed on sales counters. The first print run was 4,000 copies, which quickly ran out, with the total sold eventually reaching close to a quarter of a million copies. This included the updated collections which Cassell published each year, up to a splendid hardback 10th edition of over 300 poems in 2001 – all at Barry's suggestion, and benefiting hugely from his superb skills. He was the most patient, genial and meticulous of editors, a delightful man of immense tact and charm."