Remembering Publishing Pal Peter Warner, RIP

I am happy I can revisit a blog post I wrote and published almost nine years ago, when publishing friend Peter Warner was launching a book of his own, The Mole—The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates: A Novel. It was a clever turn on meta spy fiction, and I loved it reading it back then. I share this today, to honor Peter, who died last September, age 79, and for whom there will be a memorial tomorrow which I’m going to attend. Peter was for years the chief in NYC for Thames & Hudson, the publisher of illustrated books, where he was a participant in dozens and dozens of international co-publishing arrangements. The occasion for my post was the novel’s launch party, hosted by Will Balliet, a longtime editorial colleague of mine when we were both at Carroll & Graf, who succeeded Peter at T & H.

Peter and I were members of a monthly lunch club, Book Table, where I always enjoyed conversing with him. His literary skills were prodigious, and extended to this engrossing thriller, a historical narrative that spans the Suez Crisis, the downing of an American U-2 plane, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Watergate, all told in a faux memoir by Canadian protagonist Winston Bates. I loved it, and so did readers like author Stacy Schiff. She blurbed it thus: “Who better to trust for a through-the-looking-glass tour of Cold War Washington than a short, self-doubting Canadian with a photographic memory? A rich, buoyant ruse of a novel.” I am glad I can share word of it again with friends here.