Diana Athill
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Diana Athill OBE (born December 21, 1917 aged 94) is a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the most important writers of the 20th century.
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[edit] Life and writings
Athill graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1939[1] and worked for the BBC throughout the Second World War. After it she helped André Deutsch establish his publishing company and worked closely with many of his authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny, Brian Moore, V. S. Naipaul, Charles Gidley Wheeler and David Gurr.
She retired in 1993 at the age of 75, after more than 50 years in publishing. She continues to influence the publishing world through her revealing memoirs about her editorial career. She is best known for her books of memoirs (these were not written in chronological order, Yesterday Morning being the account of her childhood), and has also translated various works from French.
She appeared on Desert Island Discs at the age of 86 and selected a recording of Haydn's The Creation as the most valued of the eight records and Thackeray's Vanity Fair as the book.[2]
Athill was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.[3]
In 2009, she won the Costa Book Award for her memoir Somewhere Towards The End, a book about old age. In June 2010, she was the subject of a BBC documentary, "Growing Old Disgracefully", part of the Imagine series.[4]
At 94, and in good health, she now lives in a residential home in London.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Fiction
- An Unavoidable Delay (1962), short stories
- Don't Look at Me Like That: a novel. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967
- Midsummer Night in the Workhouse (2011), short stories
[edit] Autobiography
- 1963: Instead of a Letter. London: Chatto & Windus
- 1986: After a Funeral. London: Cape — winner of the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography
- 1993: Make Believe. London: Sinclair-Stevenson
- 2000: Stet: a memoir, London: Granta ISBN 1862073880
- 2002: Yesterday Morning: a very English childhood. London: Granta
- 2008: Somewhere Towards the End. London: Granta - winner of Costa prize for Biography
- 2009: Life Class: the Selected Memoirs of Diana Athill. London: Granta ISBN 1847081231
- 2011: Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend. London: Granta
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Prominent alumni, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, UK.
- ^ "Diana Athill". Desert Island Discs. BBC. 2004. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs_20040620.shtml. Retrieved 3 July 2010.
- ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 58929. p. 9. 31 December 2008.
- ^ Who is that woman who looks like me. Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
[edit] External links
- *"Editing Vidia" — full-text article in Granta, 2001, excerpt from Stet.
- Correia, Arlindo. Profile of Diana Athill; a selection of her articles extracted from various British and American publications
- Overview of published comments on Stet
- Short BBC interview with Fiona Bruce, BBC News, January 2009
- Interview with Jenni Murray and Dennis Healey on being 90, BBC Radio 4, 22 May 2009
- Essay on moving into an old people's home, The Guardian, 17 April 2009
- Diana Athill tells her life story at Web of Stories (video)
