John Randle

John Randle started The Whittington Press in 1971 in the Cotswold village of Whittington, the result partly of an early enthusiasm for Caslon type, Albion presses and hand-made paper, and partly the wish to escape from London publishing jobs at the weekend. At that time, in 1971, Richard Kennedy had just finished illustrating and writing (in that order) his A Boy at the Hogarth Press, which took us a year of weekends and holidays to print on an 1848 Columbian hand-press, and which we published to general acclaim in 1972. The Press has now published some 150 titles, including belles lettres, collections of wood-engravings, bibliographies of other presses, type specimens, and our internationally-acclaimed review for printers and bibliophiles, Matrix, now in its twenty-first year. We have always kept our numbers small, so we can concentrate solely on the end product. Rose Randle does the administration, John Randle the printing, Miriam Macgregor is compositor, and Peter Sanderson the typecaster. John Randle is president of the Fine Press Book Association, an international group of printers, collectors, librarians, booksellers and others interested in fine printing.