Hugh Campbell

Hugh James Foster Campbell, publisher: born Troon, Ayrshire 16 April 1932; married 1957 Yvonne Elizabeth Russell (died 1972; one son, one daughter), 1987 Lindsay Stainton; died London 1 October 2001.

Few trades have changed as drastically over the last 50 years as publishing. What was once a small, backward-looking and insular business, run by individualists for a relatively small market, became a cosmopolitan mass market, in which co-operation was an essential part. The career of Hugh Campbell spanned the whole of this development, to which he brought his own special combination of integrity, clear vision, imagination and humour. Born a Scot and proud of it, he was as at home in Prague as in New York; if he never lost his native pragmatism, he could see further ahead than the most starry-eyed idealist.

He was born in Troon, one of three children of a railway clerk. His parents determined to give them a good education, and Campbell went to Marr College, gaining an all-round education of a kind hardly imaginable today. A classical scholarship took him to Glasgow University, whence he graduated in 1954, straight to the great firm of William Collins, then occupying an imposing pile in Cathedral Street.

If Billy Collins's prestigious general business (Born Free and The Leopard) was based in London, its foundations lay in the cathedral-like premises in Glasgow. There books were set, printed and bound to meet the demands of a business that was more concerned with diaries, bibles and reference books. Campbell's six years there were a solid grounding in the nuts and bolts of book production, as well as the reference-book section, of which he became deputy manager.

In 1961 he was lured south to become deputy to Philip Wallis, Longman's admirable production manager, whom he eventually succeeded. It was a bigger business than Collins, with large educational interests overseas. It fell to Campbell to open up new sources of supply in the emerging markets in Africa and the Far East, his first experience of international publishing.

The old world was changing. In 1968 Longman's divisionalised itself, making Campbell's position redundant, so he moved to the Hamlyn Publishing Group, recently sold by Hamlyn to IPC, which amalgamated it with all its other publishing interests, only to be bought by Reed's, the paper group. The results were disastrous; Hamlyn himself left, and Campbell, who had joined as production manager, found himself virtually in charge of the whole amorphous book business, of which he became chief executive and, ultimately, chairman.

It was a difficult task, to which he brought his now wide experience, common sense and an imagination, latent then but now much in demand. He had no "literary" ambitions, but trying to induce some order into a group that stretched from Country Life to the Daily Mirror annuals kept his breadth of knowledge and visual sense as well as sound business brain at full stretch. He picked up and enlarged Hamlyn's Czech contacts, and found a host of friends in New York (he became chairman of A&W Publishers there). But moving into the mass paperback market was a mistake, as was selling the Odham's direct-mail business, both moves that he opposed. This, plus the strict union shop maintained by Reed's, gradually disenchanted him with "mega" publishing, and in 1984 he was happy to become Director of British Museum Publications, in succession to his old Longman's colleague Michael Hoare.

I take some credit for persuading Denis Hamilton, the Trustee in charge, of the necessity of freeing the museum's publishing from the constraints of Treasury finance, but Campbell took instantly to a new kind of business; both he and it throve. It was small compared with his previous responsibilities, but if anything more diverse, ranging from ancient catalogue overstocks to high-class modern facsimiles of antiquities.

To his British Museum colleagues he affected an "I'm a simple businessman" manner, but they soon found out how much scholarship and understanding lay beneath it. He took great pride in the financial success of the business and the extra funds it brought to help an already strapped institution, but it was for many other qualities that he was admired and respected in it. He retired in 1994, having seen turnover grow from little more than £1m when he started to over £7m. He viewed it with his usual modest irony: "It wasn't a case of waving a magic wand", but if "hardly a successful example of unfettered capitalism" to begin with, "We do very well by reflecting the excellence of the museum; that's how the system works." But, he went on, "it would be a very dull life if we only did what the museum told us to do".

Life with Hugh Campbell was never dull. The man who came down with a Glasgow accent so thick that his secretary and he took a mutual comprehension course became a man of the world, in the best possible sense. He loved beautiful things, with discriminating judgement (going round exhibitions with him was a constant pleasure); he enjoyed dressing well, in a conservative way; he liked good claret, and gave a lot of it away to his friends; and he relished the Garrick Club. Good Scot that he was, he played golf everywhere (he belonged to an exclusive publishing club that met once a year at some exotic course).

Left a widower relatively early, he was a good father; his second marriage brought him exceptional happiness. He made friends wherever he went, most recently as consultant on publishing to the Royal Horticultural Society, and Trustee of the Foundling Museum. No one enjoyed a new challenge more; if always alert to change, he was singularly consistent in all he did.

Nicolas Barker