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Saturday 28 November 2015

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Christopher Davis

Christopher Davis, who has died aged 71, was a founder and editorial director of the publishers Dorling Kindersley, which carved a distinctive niche in the international market for illustrated reference books and “how to” manuals.

Christopher Davis
Christopher Davis 

Davis joined forces with Peter Kindersley and Christopher Dorling in 1974, having previously worked with them at Mitchell Beazley. If Kindersley was the driving force of the enterprise, Davis was the good-humoured and unflappable counsel who held it together, maintained its high editorial standard, developed many of its best creative ideas, and nurtured the careers of an eclectic list of authors. Working alongside Kindersley, he wrote, was “like sharing an office with a dog that never lies down”, but it was a fruitful and enduring partnership.

Their books were distinguished by consistently beautiful artwork, typography and cut-out photographs which brought a wide range of subjects to life. The earliest DK titles included Your Baby and Child by Penelope Leach and The Atlas of Early Man, which sold in eight languages. Among Davis’s projects, in tune with the 1970s zeitgeist, was The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, who practised what he preached on a Welsh smallholding “suffused with an air of dankness and neglect” where Davis was obliged to sleep in an outhouse with “an old leg of lamb hanging over the washbasin”.

Davis was also much involved with DK’s medical list, top of which was The Red Cross First Aid Manual, which sold six million copies in 22 languages. He was the proud progenitor of its Eyewitness children’s non-fiction titles and travel guides, marketed as “the books that show you what others only tell you”. Among the authors with whom he built long-standing professional relationships were Dr Miriam Stoppard, the cook Mary Berry and Sister Wendy Beckett, whose The Story of Painting (1997) and accompanying television series became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Venturing from the Norfolk caravan where she lived on bread and water, the nun was persuaded to join Davis for lunch in Covent Garden. “Red or white, Sister Wendy?” he inquired tentatively. “I can dwink a glass or maybe two of wed,” she responded, “but I dwink white by the gallon. And I’m especially fond of Montwachet.” At her insistence, they moved on to a dessert wine called Elysium — with a last round on the house, because the restaurateur had never seen it consumed in such quantity.

DK floated on the stock market in 1992 and its run of success continued. But growth became harder to generate in the second half of the decade, and disaster came in 1999, when a contract was won to produce spin-off books for a new Star Wars film. Somehow a print run of 18 million books was authorised (not by Davis) against which sales of only five million were secured. The result was a £25 million black hole in DK’s accounts.

“Bring on the men in white coats,” was Davis’s laconic comment. He took the opportunity of the firm’s 25th anniversary dinner to announce his retirement, and a few weeks later DK agreed to a takeover by the Pearson group. After a short interval, Davis was recalled by Pearson to become DK’s deputy chairman . He retired for a second time in 2005.

Christopher John Dusser Davis was born on June 28 1941, the son of a wartime marriage which ended in divorce. His mother Pamela, later headmistress of Downe House, then married Joe Wilson, a teacher of English and drama at Bradfield, where Christopher made his mark as a pupil on the cricket field and the stage — enthusiasms which he sustained at Christ Church, Oxford, while reading English.

He began work as a graduate trainee at the Bank of England, but it was not the career for him. After a period of travelling he joined the publisher Paul Hamlyn — where he met an American, Linda Oberholtz, who became his wife — then moved to Mitchell Beazley. His most celebrated title of that era was The Joy of Sex.

Davis’s frank but affectionate memoir Eyewitness: The Rise and Fall of Dorling Kindersley was published in 2009. It conjured a final image of “new islands of landfill... the burial grounds of millions of Star Wars books”, gulls and cormorants wheeling above: “The last monument to DK’s quarter century of independent life was a mountain of guano.”

He is survived by his wife and son.

Christopher Davis, born June 28 1941, died December 2 2012

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