It's hard to get a grip on George Weidenfeld, as it is with most interesting people. A brilliant networker, salesman, indefatigable party-thrower and book progenitor, he was a man surrounded by scores of friends who loved him, but who, at the same time, suffered from intense, life-long, loneliness. This, we learn in Thomas Harding's entertaining, balanced new biography, entitled The Maverick, George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing. Balanced because it contains plenty of warts.
Right off the top Barbara Walters is quoted as saying that there were ten George Weidenfelds and that she loved every one of them. This is a tad hard to swallow given how Harding describes Weidenfeld’s behavior around young women in the workplace and how he was “slippery,” and double-crossed various authors, including one of England's finest journalist/historians.
Thomas and I met via Zoom to engage with Weidenfeld's complex and contradictory nature. Topics, titles and title-holders touched on include: the dark arts of publishing; Top Gun: Maverick; cunnilingus; Ann Getty; loneliness; consensual sex; Saul Bellow and keeping authors in the fold; Lolita, free expression, and courting controversy; The Double Helix and legal reads; living large; the CIA; getting bailed out; Henry Kissinger; vanity projects; partnering with foreign publishers; Zionism, Israel and the Netanyahus; Sir Max Hastings; internationalism; hedgehogs and foxes; Grove Press; cuckolding, and jealousy; energy, stamina and charm; books building bridges between people; politics trumping publishing; and not cutting yourself off from your enemies.
Thomas Harding on George Weidenfeld, Publishing and Sex