Tom Maschler

Tom Maschler is a British publisher and writer. The son of Austrian Jews, he was five when his family fled the Nazis in Vienna and brought him to England. As a teenager, he travelled widely, worked on a kibbutz and did national service before going on to become one of the most dynamic figures in publishing.

In his role as head of Jonathan Cape, he discovered and published many writers including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ian McEwan and Bruce Chatwin to whom he acted as an informal patron. On The Black Hill was inspired by Chatwin's stay in Maschler's Welsh holiday cottage on the English-Welsh borders and it was there that Chatwin wrote most of the manuscript.

One of Maschler's earliest coups was purchasing Joseph Heller's Catch 22 for £250. He also was one of the key figures responsible for creating the Booker Prize in the late Sixties - envisaged as a British version of the French Prix Goncourt. His memoir, "Publisher", was published in 2005.

He was married to Fay Maschler, the long-serving London "Evening Standard" restaurant critic, but divorced in the mid-Eighties.

External links

* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1434855,00.html Guardian profile]