ALIVE AND KICKING AT 228

"My dear Mr Murray,

You're in a damned hurry

To set up this ultimate Canto

But (if they don't rob us)

You'll see Mr Hobhouse

Will bring it safe in his portmanteau."

So begins one of the most famous business letters in the world, written in verse by Lord Byron, in Venice, to John Murray II, his London publisher, who was understandably keen to get his hands on the last Canto of the best-selling Childe Harold. The Byron craze reached such heights that early Cantos of Don Juan had to be handed out of the windows of Murray's home and office at 50 Albemarle Street to the mob of of buyers blocking the road.

Some 178 years later, a letter reaches us from Albemarle Street from John II's great-great-great-grandson John VII (a positively Papal number), to say that his company is now the longest surviving truly independent publisher in the world.

The first John Murray set up as a bookseller and publisher in 1768, but things really started getting lively with his son, who in 1809 launched the Quarterly Review and a literary salon that gathered Byron, Sir Walter Scott, Southey, Crabbe, Moore, Madame de Stael and others. John III rivalled the impressive tally of his predecessor's publishing successes: his brainchild was the famous Murray Handbooks, almost the first travel guides; on the same day, in 1859, he brought out both Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Samuel Smiles' Self-Help.

And so on, with John VI's latter-day authors including John Betjeman (with Southey, their second Laureate), Kenneth Clarke (his Civilisation was the first TV tie-in), Freya Stark: in 1956 a foray abroad produced Bonjour Tristesse by the 18-year-old sensation Francoise Sagan.

Despite all this literary glitter, how has John Murray survived, in a time when quality does not always pay the bills? After the War the company launched an educational list mainly for secondary schools, whose success must have bolstered the coffers royally. Hands up all those who remember D G Mackean's Introduction to Biology.