Agate once described him as looking like “a sleek, well-groomed dormouse” out of a John Tenniel illustration of Alice in Wonderland, due to Bertie’s tendency to dress in a dapper suit, bow tie, monocle, and black shiny shoes. He had been impressed by Agate’s review of Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Van Thal was a friend and publisher of the critic James Agate, whom he met in 1932. Later he became a general editor of the Doughty Library published by Anthony Blond. The house was known as a “mushroom” publisher, since it sprang up overnight after the war. Henry Irving and Harry Lauder were friends of the family.Īfter the Second World War, he founded the short-lived publishing house of Home and van Thal, with his friends Margaret Douglas-Home and Gwylim Fielden Hughes. Van Thal’s grandfather was a distiller (King’s Liqueur Whisky), and was a director of the theatre proprietors, Howard and Wyndham. Bertie Maurice van Thal (1904–1983), known as Herbert van Thal, was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist.
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