Stephen Hayward, who has died of a heart attack aged 61, founded the independent publisher Serif in 1992 and ran it from his east London home with great creative care. The book jackets, by Pentagram Berlin, are works of art in themselves.
Stephen, the son of Gay (nee Goulding), an orthoptist, and Victor, a major general, developed his love of books at St Edward’s school, Oxford, where he read one extracurricular book a week. By the time he reached Jesus College, Cambridge, to study law and social and political sciences, he had covered most political thinkers.
Studying for a diploma in international relations in Bologna in 1976-77 sparked a lifelong identification with the PCI (the Italian Communist party) and its attempt to win cultural and political hegemony to advance socialism. Stephen was a “euro-communist”, with strong belief in the power of words to change people’s ideas. From 1983 to 1991 he was an editor at the communist publishers Lawrence & Wishart.
In the 1990s he co-edited three anthologies with Sarah LeFanu. Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa (1990), inspired by the 1988 Free Nelson Mandela concert, had a foreword by the recently released Mandela himself. It was followed by God: An Anthology of Fiction (1992) and Obsession (1995), with its playful, thought-provoking dedication, “To Luis Buñuel, obsessive free-thinker”.
Passionate about Spain’s culture and history, Stephen wrote an unpublished book on the pilgrims’ way to Santiago, which he walked, an atheist with a pilgrim’s crook. From Santiago he continued to the ancients’ “end of the earth”, Cape Finisterre, where his family will scatter his ashes. I received a withering look on suggesting that he should publish the book himself: “Serif is not a vanity publisher.”
Serif’s eclectic collection reflects Stephen’s interests. Several books are important reissues, such as George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England (originally published in 1935), Jorge Semprún’s The Cattle Truck (1963) and two beautiful books on western Ireland by JM Synge. He also published original books on food, including collections of Parsi, Moghul, Bengali and Ancient Roman recipes and Cooking in Ten Minutes by Edouard de Pomiane, his star cookery author.
Stephen’s warm personality and intelligence gave him several circles of friends. He loved to talk, but was able to listen, usually amid laughter in uncommon restaurants. Conversations with Stephen took flight and hurtled happily from theme to theme.
Stephen is survived by his mother and his sister, Vicky.
