Literary agent Gillon Aitken of Aitken Alexander Associates passes away

Literary agent Gillon Aitken of Aitken Alexander Associates has died.

Aitken died peacefully this morning (28th October) after a period of ill health.

Clare Alexander said: “A towering figure in so many of our lives, publishing has lost a great agent from a brilliant generation. He was a wise counsel, a true intellectual and an irreplaceable friend.”

She added: “I am sure he would wish to be remembered in the words of some of the many authors who valued his guidance deeply and who came to love him so much.”

Novelist Sebastian Faulks said: “Gillon was one of my closest friends. He was also my literary agent for 30 years. He was a wonderful mixture of the grand and the modest: lofty, amusing, well-connected but warm in friendship and with little personal pride. The way he lived his last years after the loss of his beloved only child, Charlotte, was a lesson in stoicism and dignity that I shall never forget. As an agent, he was creative, mischievous and drove a hard bargain; but he was also realistic. For my wife and for me, there was no one like Gillon – and there never will be again.” Read more