p17 diary Anthony Cheetham.Fell out with his boss Robert Maxwell at Macdonald and raised £600,000 to set up his own company, Century, in 1981.Bought Hutchinson in 1985.In 1989, sold the lot to Random House, a deal which made him and his then wife 38 million.In 1992 he started Orion.Still chief executive at 57.
Publishers who made it big in the Eighties.
ES
20 December 2012
Here’s a turn-up for the books. Anthony Cheetham has hired his ex-wife, Rosie De Courcy, as a senior editor at his pubishing house, Head of Zeus, which he set up in January, with Fay Weldon among its launch authors.
Rosie will have a role to acquire and commission new fiction.
Cheetham co-founded Century in the Eighties with Gail Rebuck, Peter Roche and his then wife. “When we worked together in an earlier incarnation Rosie was responsible for bringing more than 40 national bestsellers to the list and 16 of these sold upwards of a million copies,” says Cheetham. Proof that this really is the season of forgiveness and reconciliation.
