THE WORLD of Thames sailing barges, their skippers and crew is not usually associated with literary agents, but Andrew Best — who established an academic division at Curtis Brown and, later, his own consultancy — was very much at home there, welcomed aboard and ashore from St Katharine Docks to Southend Pier and Faversham Creek.
Parties always went on longer when he was present, as he encouraged such old sailormen as Beefy Wildish and Harry Parter to recount their more improbable sailing stories. Those who were on board will never forget his tactful handling of a distinguished American novelist who arrived at a Swale Barge Match clad in white suit and shoes, or his delight in having Tower Bridge raised to let Remercie pass through, twice.
He arrived at Magdalene College, Cambridge, from Winchester, having been spared National Service because he had suffered from poliomyelitis. (He and the Army would not have suited each other, in any case.) Magdalene in the 1950s was not an intellectual college, expecting from undergraduates a merely formal attention to their studies; there was much excitement when one of them, Stephen Haskell, succeeded in getting a First.
Best was founder member of a college club, the Dancing Bears — the reference being to Alcuin’s condemnation of 8th-century students behaving not like scholars but dancing bears. After three years at Cambridge he needed a serious challenge and accepted a post in a Barbados school before moving to a Leytonstone comprehensive. At both he proved an excellent and sympathetic teacher who took great trouble with difficult pupils.
He then gained some experience in publishing with The Bodley Head and Hamish Hamilton. While working at Longmans Educational Press he shared a pub with the scene shifters from Covent Garden, and discussed with them the operatic repertoire. The stagehands’ favourite was Bohème, the shortest; the most unpopular, Götterdämmerung: “I ask you — Valhalla in ruins, the Rhine in flames and 30 minutes to the last train!”
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In 1970 he joined Curtis Brown. “Academic Division” was a fluid description that covered a wide range of writers and subjects. Best’s clients, more than a thousand of them, ranged from scientists such as Christiaan Barnard and Hans Eysenck, to the historians Alan Bullock, Piers Brendon, David Starkey and N. A. M Rodger, and included such eminences as Isaiah Berlin and John Betjeman.
His most complex negotiations must have been those conducted on behalf of Michael Bloch, in the publication of the Duke of Windsor’s papers, which involved the Duchess’s French solicitor, Maître Suzanne Blum, the Pasteur Institute and the Daily Mail.
Best took immense pains to ensure that his lesser clients were equally well served. As well as being a steely bargainer he was an admirable editor, by no means part of an agent’s responsibilities, but one which he enjoyed. His criticisms, however gently phrased, were never to be lightly ignored.
On leaving Curtis Brown in 1990 Best established, with his wife, Jackie, a literary consultancy. There, his clients included Pirelli, the RAC and the Historic Houses Association. The work was as varied as the clients, and encompassed shepherding new authors through the press, and supervising the first magnificent catalogues of the Sabah Collection (Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah), in the National Museum, Kuwait. Only stern professionalism enabled him to find the time also to publish, with Jackie, a book on the practicalities of dealing with death and, with Jackie and Philip Diamond, the Covent Garden Fish Book, which must lurk, scaly and spotted but much cherished, in very many kitchens.
The Bests were a musical family: Andrew had a fine, sensitive tenor voice, employed to good effect in the Noblemen & Gentlemen’s Catch Club, Purcell’s bawdy songs being a speciality. His brother, Martin, is well known as a lutenist, and Andrew founded the choir, the Holland Group, in which he and his brother, Jeremy, often sang together.
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He is survived by his wife, their two daughters and a son and daughter from his two previous marriages.
Andrew Best, publisher and literary agent, was born on January 20, 1933. He died on August 19, 2006, aged 73.