Diana Athill, OBE 1917-2019

_. Diana Athill, OBE, one of book publishing's great editors, and a writer who enjoyed enormous literary success, scion of the Carrs of Ditchingham, has died aged 101.

She was born 21 December, 1917, daughter of Maj Lawrence Athill by his wife the former Alice Catharine Carr, and was a granddaughter of William Carr (1862-1925), of Ditchingham Hall, co Norfolk.

During her 40-year partnership with André Deutsch, Diana Athill helped promote the careers of writers like Jean Rhys, V S Naipaul, Brian Moore, John Updike, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Margaret Atwood. She encouraged her authors to “try to write the truth, however indecent”, a precept she adopted herself in a series of autobiographical memoirs.

-=-