The maverick

After arriving in London just before the Second World War as a penniless and friendless Austrian-Jewish refugee, George Weidenfeld went on to transform not only the world of publishing but the culture of ideas. The books that he published include momentous titles such as 'Lolita', 'Double Helix', 'The Group' and 'The Hedgehog and the Fox', with authors he championed ranging from Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Golda Meir and Edna O'Brien to Henry Miller, Harold Wilson, Saul Bellow and Henry Kissinger. In this biography, Thomas Harding provides a full, unvarnished and at times difficult history of this complex and fascinating character.