Master and Commanders

A belated congratulations for two of Britain’s publishing legends who were named in the Queen’s New Years Honours list as reported in The Bookseller –

Lord Weidenfeld, who founded the Weidenfeld & Nicolson publishing house in 1949 and remains its chairman, was appointed a Knights Grand Cross of the Order for the British Empire for his public service. Weidenfeld's first employee was Antonia Fraser, appointed a dame in the honours list. Speaking to the Bookseller in 2009, Weidenfeld said of her: "Point a gun to my head and ask who is your number one star author I would say her, for the quality, the loyalty, the decency, in the good times and bad."

Another well-known publishing figure, former Harvill publisher Christopher MacLehose, was appointed as a Commander of the British Empire [CBE] for his services to the publishing industry. He is responsible for bringing the likes of Haruki Murakami and Henning Mankell to the UK and his Quercus imprint publishes Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.

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And speaking of the late Stieg Larsson, the three volumes of his Millennium Series were the three biggest selling books in Britain in 2010 as reported by The Bookseller –

Stieg Larsson looks on course to be the biggest selling author of last year, according to pre-Christmas sales data from Nielsen BookScan. The figures, for the 50 weeks ending 11th December, leave out the crucial final trading weeks before Christmas.

However, during the course of the 50 weeks, Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus) sold 1.16m copies. Second was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, with 995,845 copies sold. Third was The Girl Who Played with Fire, selling 957,063 books.

Photo (c) 2008 A Karim featuring Christopher MacLehose CBE with Erland Larsson