British author Ruth Hamilton, a native of Bolton, where she set for many of her novels, died April 14, the Bookseller reported. She was 76. Hamilton's books include The Corner House, Midnight on Lime Street, Meet Me at the Pier Head, A Mersey Mile, A Whisper to the Living and the Liverpool trilogy.
Wayne Brookes, publishing director for fiction at Pan Macmillan, said: "To call Roofy (as I always knew her) a 'character' was a vast understatement. She was more like a force of nature and one incredible storyteller. We laughed, cried and screamed at each other for six years, and today I lost a friend and a sparring partner. It's true to say that there will be a huge Roofy shaped hole in my life."
Her agent, Caroline Sheldon, said Hamilton "was a wonderful writer. She had a rare power to tell a story and involve the reader in the lives of her characters. I had the pleasure of being her literary agent for 12 years and her death is an enormous loss. The phrase we will not see her like again can be a cliché but, in the writer Ruth Hamilton's case, it is totally appropriate."
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British literary agent Peter Janson-Smith, who represented Ian Fleming, has died, the Bookseller reported. He was 93, Janson-Smith worked for agent A.D. Peters from 1946-1949 and then joined Curtis Brown as manager of its foreign language department, before setting up his own agency, PJS Ltd., in 1956. After Fleming's death, he became chairman of Glidrose Publications, which is now Ian Fleming Publications.
Janson-Smith's client list also included Gavin Maxwell, Eric Ambler, Richard Holmes and C. Northcote Parkinson, the Bookseller wrote, adding that he represented Anthony Burgess "until the author's move to Deborah Rogers Ltd., selling Burgess's seminal novel A Clockwork Orange in the early 1960s." For over 30 years, he served as the executive trustee of the Pooh Properties Trust (licensing Winnie the Pooh), and for two years was president of the Royal Literary Fund.