Diana Athill

Diana Athill (21 December 1917 – 23 January 2019) was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company Andre Deutsch Ltd. Early life Diana Athill was born in Kensington, London, during a World War I Zeppelin bombing raid, daughter of Major Lawrence Francis Imbert Athill (1888–1957) and Alice Katharine (1895–1990), daughter of the biographer William Carr (1862–1925). She had a brother, Andrew, and a sister, Patience. Her maternal grandmother was the daughter of James Franck Bright (1832–1920), a Master of University College, Oxford. She was brought up at Ditchingham Hall in Norfolk, a country house owned by her mother's family. Athill graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1939 and worked for the BBC throughout the Second World War. Career After the war, Athill helped her friend André Deutsch establish the publishing house Allan Wingate, and five years later, in 1952, she was a founding director of the publishing company that was given his name. She worked closely with many Deutsch authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny, Brian Moore, V. S. Naipaul, Molly Keane, Stevie Smith, Jack Kerouac, Charles Gidley Wheeler, Margaret Atwood, and David Gurr.