Ian Norrie (1927–2009)

Ian Norrie was a bookseller, author, historian of publishing, and publisher. After embarking on a career as a journalist, he was encouraged by friend, colleague, and bookseller Martyn Goff to work as his manager at a bookshop in Seaford, Sussex. Norrie founded High Hill Press in 1968, serving as the publisher, editor, and occasional author of twenty-eight books on Hampstead and London. He was on the executive of the National Book League for thirteen years and served on the management committee of the Booker Prize for five years. After retirement he lived in Barnet, on the northern edge of London, where he remained active as a journalist and completed a novel. He was a bookseller and a chronicler of the book trade. The first of his two revisions of F. A. Mumby’s classic, Publishing and Bookselling was published by Jonathan Cape in 1974, updating that history from 1870; the second, from Bell and Hyman (1982), described the trade’s development in the twentieth century. MENTORS and FRIENDS has a more idiosyncratic approach. Norrie’s Hampstead bookshop was one of the best known and appreciated independent bookshops in the country. For over thirty years, Ian and his late wife Mavis, worked with numerous publishers and booksellers. He wrote for The Bookseller and Publishing News and engaged in voluntary work with the National Book League, The Society of Bookmen, the Book Trade Benevolent Society and the Booker Prize Management Committee.