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| George Weidenfeld |
My hero: George Weidenfeld by Antonia Fraser
Lord Weidenfeld, who died this week aged 96, hired author Lady Antonia Fraser when she first started writing. She remembers him introducing her to Wagner and for his perfect chat-up line: “Have you ever thought of writing a book?”Friday 22 January 2016
“His name is George Weidenfeld,” said my mother, “and he’s a brilliant young publisher.” She added: “He’s very interested in offering you a job.”
A lunch was duly arranged at the house in Chester Square where George lived with his young wife, Jane Sieff, and new-born baby, Laura. George might have been my mother’s idea of a young publisher, but he did not seem young to me. He was actually in his early 30s at the time but he looked no particular age. A Jewish refugee from Austria, son of a dispossessed university professor, he resembled the French King Louis XVI, husband of Marie Antoinette, except that he suffered from none of the poor young king’s difficulties with women: George loved women and women loved him back, particularly as he had the best chat-up line in the world at his disposal: “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” Pause full of meaning, then: “I believe you would write a very good book.” He was also (unlike Louis XVI who was portly and clumsy) a deft and graceful dancer. George’s enormous rolling eyes, like gooseberries, were ever on the lookout for new projects, new books, new areas of the publishing world to conquer.
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| Felicitous moments … George Weidenfield with Antonia Fraser in 1966 |
Weidenfeld & Nicolson was founded in 1949. Nigel Nicolson, the co-founder, was the son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; by 1953 he had become the Conservative MP for Bournemouth and, busy with his new political career, was no more than a benevolent presence in our lives. George began to give those dinner parties for which he would become famous and remain so, for more than 60 years.
Naturally at home everywhere in Europe where there was literature or music, George was a huge influence on me. I did not move away from my passion for history, but I was enchanted by the other possibilities now presented to me. Perhaps my greatest single debt to George was in the realm of music. He introduced me to his beloved Wagner, in the shape of the Ring cycle, beginning with a memorable night at Covent Garden.
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| George Weidenfeld and Jane Sieff |
I emerged into the world of writing believing that publishers were not unknown, faceless persons crouching behind filing cabinets with rejection slips between their teeth, but my friends. That casual moment when George Weidenfeld turned to his dinner partner and asked her advice about a new employee, represented one of the felicitous turning points of my early life.
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