Geordie Greig pays tribute to former Faber and Faber boss Matthew Evans

Matthew Evans was a colossus of the publishing world and the mesmerising midwife to many of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

As chairman of Faber & Faber he presided over a golden period of writing which defined British and Irish literature as a major force in the world.

It was a time when Kazuo Ishiguro, Ted Hughes, P D James, Seamus Heaney and Samuel Beckett were Faber authors, all of whom found him enabling, idiosyncratic and charming, a man who eased their professional lives and enhanced their personal ones too. He also crucially hired Faber’s greatest editorial director, Robert McCrum, a magnet for talent.

Matthew was funny and candid, an entrepreneurial spirit who loved to be with writers. Hughes and Heaney were godfathers to two of his children. T S Eliot’s second wife Valerie found him to be an anchor in her long widowhood as the major Faber shareholder and guardian of her husband’s flame.

Born in 1941, Matthew had ink in his veins, his father being the writer George Ewart Evans. But he was primarily a marketing and business star, a sense of fun and energy defining him. He was oddly self-deprecating in his achievements — the boy from Saffron Walden who went on to become a Labour peer of the realm and also a pillar of the British Film Institute and first chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council — of course, his first report would include an original poem by Ted Hughes. Matthew was also a government spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and other departments.

Even though he steered Faber to extraordinary success, he was too curious to be defined as a company man. There was an artist’s restlessness embedded in him as he looked at the world with a wry sideways glance.

Matthew was a literary ringmaster who was gregarious, modest and surprisingly shy, his sense of humour deflating any pomposity.

I remember Matthew at a Faber party telling Valerie Eliot in front of me that I had just published a mischievous paragraph in The Sunday Times — where I was literary editor — rudely chastising her for being too slow in her editing of her late husband’s collected letters. He loved the frisson of seeing her look crossly at me, until I quickly said: “But, you know Matthew told me that piece of information in the first place.” Matthew looked aghast and then laughed. “Touché!” he said as Mrs Eliot eyed us both suspiciously.

We became fast friends from that moment. And what a friend. He liked making things happen for other people. He hated compliments. He made a difference to everyone he came across. I always called him, even to his face, Mischief Evans, rather than just Matthew, because he did not do straightforward or dull. He liked to stir it up. He was a man who brought laughter, creativity and friendship as well as being the publisher that all writers loved to love.

His second wife was the literary agent Caroline Michel, with whom he has two sons and a daughter. He also had two sons by his first wife Elizabeth Mead. Caroline and he remained extremely close even after their separation in 2010. His family was the one thing that trumped his love of literature.