"George Allen & Unwin as a publishing imprint reflected a cross-section of the intellectual achievement of the Twentieth Century. In his Remembrancer, [former chairman] Rayner Unwin traces the vicissitudes of his own time with the Company. It is a digressive and personal history, with reflections on the delights as well as the dangers of a style of publishing that is now fast vanishing. He does not attempt to re-tell the early part of the firm's story. Instead, he focuses intially on the excitements and innovations of the post-war period, with memories of authors like Tolkien and Thor Heyerdahl, Bertrand Russell and Roald Dahl. Regrettably, however, it proved to be the height of the firm's fortunes when Rayner Unwin takes up the story. After a couple of decades, it was followed, inexorably, by a falling off; weaknesses were exposed and attempts to remedy them failed. The eventual take-over of the Company and its extinction was a sad conclusion. The Remembrancer ends by recording the sequence of events, and thereby winds up the history of a distinguished firm" --