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Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and\xa0Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.

His book\xa0My Back Pages,\xa0An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022\xa0came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.\xa0

Just so you know, Richard has been very good to\xa0The Biblio File\xa0podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests.\xa0 And John Banville! I\u2019m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things,\xa0great publishers, the\xa0challenges facing the book business, and how to set up a small publishing house.

I wrote this about him a while back:

Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It\u2019s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions\u2026

His writing invited and welcomed a human response.\xa0

I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he\u2019s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently\xa0in the form of an OBE.\xa0

It\u2019s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his \u201cservice to literature,\u201d has been recognized.