From a contemporary vantage point, where AI and many other technological influences are changing the face of communications, reading Thomas Harding’s The Maverick feels almost like an experience in time travel. Although George Weidenfeld, the subject of Harding’s biographical study, died only seven years ago, his career embodied an approach to publishing that was born several generations before his 1938 arrival in London. Now, the industry is largely overshadowed by the dynamics of the large corporations that generate most of today’s bestsellers.

An impoverished Jewish refugee, Arthur George Weidenfeld arrived in London from Austria just before the outbreak of World War II. Ten months later, and thanks to a tip from an acquaintance in the modest boarding house he called home, Weidenfeld was hired to work in the BBC Overseas Intelligence Department.

It was here that Weidenfeld launched his first publishing venture, encouraging a BBC colleague, Derrick Sington, to coauthor with him The Goebbels Experiment: A Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine. This work explored Weidenfeld’s belief that it was the control of modern communications that had brought the Nazis to power in Germany, and is still rated #785 among Amazon’s bestsellers in Political Psychology and Propaganda.

Although George (as he had come to be known) stayed with the BBC until the war was nearing its end, a drive to be his own boss led him to found a literary-cultural magazine. Eventually named Contact, Weidenfeld’s magazine attracted both affluent investors and popular contributors. Ultimately, Contact evolved into a small book-publishing house, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. It was subsidized primarily by Nigel Nicolson, Weidenfeld’s new business partner and the son of writers Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Weidenfeld’s own marriage to Jane Sieff, the child of a wealthy British business leader, secured the firm’s financial future.

From then on, Weidenfeld’s entire focus was on publishing books that would transform not only the publishing industry but the culture of ideas, seeking to recount the history of events and people that determined world affairs. Nor could the publisher’s background as a penniless Austrian Jewish refugee have foretold the industry giant he was to become. Within just a decade of finding and publishing new authors, Weidenfeld had established himself in London’s publishing community and came to be regarded by some as the “greatest salesperson,” “the world’s best networker” and “the publisher’s publisher.”

At times Harding’s book reads like a who’s who of twentieth-century literary history. While Weidenfeld’s network of celebrities was enormous, the biographer has chosen to organize his book around Weidenfeld’s relationships with eleven who “provided the best insights and narrative” for his long life. These included four significant authors: Saul Bellow, author of The Adventures of Augie March and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature; Antonia Fraser, a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction; Henry Miller, the American novelist, short-story writer and essayist; and J. D. Salinger, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye.

Prominent representatives of other fields who were part of Wiedenfeld’s life are also featured, including:

  • James Watson, the American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, and co-author with Francis Crick of the first description of DNA;

  • Harold Wilson, twice prime minister of the United Kingdom;

  • Unity Mitford, a British socialite also known for her relationship with Adolf Hitler;

  • Max Hastings, British journalist and military historian;

  • Albert Speer, a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany for most of World War II;

  • Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian politician and diplomat who was the secretary-general of the United Nations and later president of Austria; and

  • Mick Jagger, singer and songwriter of The Rolling Stones.

Besides Harding’s chosen luminaries (above), Weidenfeld’s rolodex gave him access to such bestselling writers as Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy and Edna O’Brien. He also communicated with important public figures like US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former US presidents George H. W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson, Ann Getty (American philanthropist, publisher and paleoanthropologist), and business mogul and former US president Donald Trump. As a result, the books published in the UK under Weidenfeld’s leadership included groundbreaking titles: Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov, 1955); The Double Helix (James D. Watson, 1968); The Group (Mary McCarthy, 1963); and The Hedgehog and the Fox (Isaiah Berlin, 1953).

As Harding’s first biography, his portrait of Weidenfeld is impressive. Weidenfeld’s intellect and motivations are not easy to divine, and saying he was a complex individual is understating his genius. However, thanks to the author’s heavy investment in researching Weidenfeld’s career and in studying his correspondence, memos and other documents from the private files of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, this reviewer was able to finish the volume feeling that she had truly come to understand the qualities that produced Weidenfeld’s greatness—a brilliant mind, an exceptional memory, and the outlook of a global citizen. He was equally at home in London, Jerusalem, New York, Bonn and eventually in Berlin, Vienna and Rome, all venues where he had interests, business and friends.

Although Harding includes highlights of Weidenfeld’s personal life, he focuses more on the publisher’s talents for negotiating disputes, closing deals and placating prima donna authors, rather than analyzing his subject’s motivations. Weidenfeld was a people person, gifted with irrepressible bonhomie and considerable personal charm, and he rarely failed to win over those he wanted to add to his coterie. As Harding writes, “For his part, George was unfazed by tantrums of the rich and famous.”

In particular, one of the qualities that Harding’s biography illuminates is Weidenfeld’s determination and the lengths he was willing to go to publish properties he perceived as important and valuable. Among the numerous examples that illustrate his persistence was the campaign he waged to get permission to publish Lolita. Among the unusual aspects of this campaign were a public address to the House of Commons in support of a bill modifying Britain’s obscenity laws and the initiation of a public letter-writing campaign waged by scores of highly regarded writers.

While publishing remained at the center of Weidenfeld’s life until his death in 2016, his appointment to the UK’s House of Lords in 1976 led to several years focused on influencing government policies. However, just a few years later when the publishing firm encountered increasing financial instability, Weidenfeld returned to his executive responsibilities and set about expanding his firm’s markets in the United States. To this end, Weidenfeld acquired Grove Press in partnership with Ann Getty in 1985.

Although Harding acknowledges that Weidenfeld’s career can be described merely as a “rags-to-riches” story, the biographer has chosen instead to ask his readers to see Weidenfeld as larger than life, the ultimate hero of an epoch in which the activities that made publishing a dominant business in England were at their zenith. That said, any publishing novice would be well served to read Harding’s book, which is rich with case studies of potential problems when publishers launch new books into the market.

At the same time, as this book’s title implies, Weidenfeld accomplished his publishing prominence by challenging traditional publishing standards and risking everything to publish new and controversial ideas. The list he built through his firm ran the gamut from fiction that featured explicit sexual content to scientific nonfiction of the highest intellectual level. Moreover, while he worked closely with editors, it was almost always Weidenfeld’s own foresight and engaging personality that ensured these manuscripts were acquired and published.