My brother, Tony Selina, who has died aged 72, was a man of wide-ranging enthusiasms. A mechanical engineer who later became a graphic designer, he was also passionate about theatre, music and astrology.
Tony was born in Leeds to Alexander Selina, an engineer, and his wife, Helena (nee Batty). He attended St Michael’s grammar school in Leeds – and after spending much of his childhood building model aeroplanes, followed in his father’s engineering footsteps, taking a degree in mechanical engineering at Manchester University in the early 1960s.
During a short spell as a trainee graduate with Rolls-Royce in Derby, however, he joined a local theatre group – a fateful move that reaffirmed his reluctance to pursue a career in engineering. It was a feeling no doubt enhanced by his appearance as an extra in Ken Russell’s 1969 film adaptation of Women in Love.
On moving to London in the early 1970s, he soon found an outlet for his growing interest in graphics with a part-time job as a designer for Workshop New Poetry, a small quarterly publication edited by Norman Hidden. This also provided him with a serendipitous link to, and occasional work for, the Rationalist Press Association and the Humanist magazine.
For the following 20 years, Islington became his cultural home. On Sunday evenings he could always be heard cheering on Ruthie Smith and her all-female jazz band, the Guest Stars, at the King’s Head in Upper Street – and he’d be there again the following night, being equally enthusiastic about a gig by the Elderly Brothers or Melanie Harrold.
After a spell as the head of design at Kogan Page – a small publisher based on Pentonville Road – Tony set up the Old Goat Graphic Company, a one-man operation with a small but chaotic studio space at Clerkenwell Workshops. It was from here that he produced many of the covers used by Wordsworth Press in their Children’s Classics series, as well as jackets for a host of other titles.
Astrology was another great passion of Tony’s – and he eventually became quite well known in astrological circles for his insightful, humorous and engaging talks.
Tony was a larger-than-life character who will be quietly missed by a great many people, although, of his family, I am the only one to survive him.
