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Lieutenant C A A Black
Late Scots Guards
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 Charles Black, who died on 9th October 2013, aged 76, was born in London on 4th May 1937. He was educated at Winchester College where he demonstrated a love of golf and cricket, playing cricket for the Winchester 1st X1 and for the English Public Schools. He arrived at Caterham in September 1955 to attend Brigade Squad prior to a commission in the Scots Guards. A contemporary on the course, EP Colquhoun, recalled that ‘Trained Soldier Boyle kept us all hard at polishing everything and Sergeant Haynes (possibly one of the smartest guardsman I have ever seen) rifted us all over Caterham. I think I could be correct in saying that Charles was the only Wykehamist in our entirely Scots Guards hut. I heard he was that school’s fastest ever bowler. He was always a sensible guardsman and kept his nose clean even at Eaton Hall.... always a quiet, gentle and intelligent person, he was a good tennis player and friend’.
Following national service, Charles Black went up to Christ Church College, Oxford, where he captained the university’s real tennis team. He followed this with six months at the Harvard Business School before joining the family publishing firm, A & C Black, in 1968. The company was founded in Edinburgh in 1807 by Charles’s great-great-grandfather, Adam Black, who was then a 23-year-old bookshop owner and publisher, and his nephew Charles. After Adam’s death, his sons moved the company, in 1895, to London’s Soho Square, while retaining its Scottish identity. The company’s involvement with Scottish authors was central to their original business; they acquired, for example, the copyright to the novels of Sir Walter Scott in 1851. Over the years, A & C Black was responsible for such popular publications as Whitaker’s Almanack, Wisden, Black’s Medical Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and P G Wodehouse’s first novel, The Pothunters. Charles Black, a playing member of the MCC, was proud to get mentions in Wisden in 1955 and 1956, little realising that within a few years his firm would own this famous title.
By far the most prestigious and well-known of the firm’s titles was Who’s Who which had gained a reputation for accuracy and its concise biographies. When his father retired in 1973, Charles took over as chairman and was careful to remain apart from the day-to-day running of this publication. He left all decisions to his editors and made it a policy never to interfere about those who were or were not included; he never allowed his own name to be considered. He proved a shrewd businessman, floating the company on the Stock Exchange and building a modern distribution centre near Cambridge. He was also keen to expand the firm’s range of publications, with books on music, natural history, fitness, and children’s titles. These were all commercially successful, as was Black’s expansion into reference books, acquiring firms such as Adlard Coles Nautical, the Christopher Helm’s ornithology list, and Peter Collin, the dictionary publisher.
Charles Black foresaw that the digital revolution would change the publishing business radically, and one of his last major commercial decisions was to find a suitable buyer for the company, well aware that this would end a long family association with the book trade. In 2000, Charles finalised a deal with Bloomsbury (publisher of the Harry Potter books) which valued his firm at £16.4 million. He retired as chairman in the same year, continuing as a non-executive director of Bloomsbury.
In retirement, Charles played more golf; he had been a member of Royal St George’s Golf Club in Sandwich for many years, and had been the club’s captain. He was also a member of the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon; he flew to Australia in his first year of retirement to watch the Australian Open Tennis, combining it with a few games of golf at the National Golf Course on the demanding Moonah Course.
In 1964 Charles Black married Melanie Lowson, daughter of Sir Denys Lowson, He is survived by his wife and their son and daughter, Adam and Holly. |
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