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Publisher Hamish MacGibbon dies aged 88
The publisher Hamish MacGibbon has died aged 88 after a fall. Born to James MacGibbon (publisher at MacGibbon and Kee in the 1950s) and to Jean (a writer), he read history at Trinity College Cambridge after a period of National Service in the Royal Artillery, and then went into publishing. He worked for many years at Heinemann Educational Books, and by the early 1980s had become their managing director, under the Chairmanship of Alan Hill.
Following the acquisition of HEB by BTR in 1983, Hamish and Alan set up Hill MacGibbon, a pioneering educational software enterprise that was later acquired by HarperCollins.
After that Hamish set up James & James Publishers, and spent the next 30 years as a small independent, publishing illustrated non-fiction, mainly school and company histories. It briefly included a science list that was then spun off into a separate, independent company that grew to acquire Earthscan in 2003 and take on its name.
After retiring, he researched and published Maverick Spy: Stalin’s Super-agent in World War II, a biography of his father, Robert, that covered his extraordinary and colourful life.
At the time of Hamish’s death he was living with his second wife, Renata, in Hampstead and is survived by his three children Hannah, Seamus and Amy.
