Michael Dempsey (1944-1981)

From The Times obituary by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, 4 January 1982

Any violent death is sad: sadder when it comes most untimely. This was the case with Michael Dempsey, the publisher and entrepreneur, who died after an accidental fall on December 7. He was 37.

Michael Cornelius Dempsey was born in August 1944. His father, who served in the Royal Navy, and his mother were both of Irish birth. Dempsey grew up in Lancashire, educated in the Irish tradition by the Christian Brothers. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English and edited Granta.

On coming down he worked briefly in magazine journalism before joining Hutchinson as an editorial trainee. His talent as an editor was soon recognised. He edited the New Authors list, and even found some new authors, before moving to Granada where he became editorial director of MacGibbon and Kee at the age of 26.

The Dempsey’s gifts were not apt for working in an organisation was, however, something on which he and his several employers would have cordially agreed. He left Granada in 1975 to start a new list (aimed, he said, at the middle-aged hippy) under the aegis of Cassell and Co. That arrangement did not last long either.

For the last five years or so Dempsey published independently, in a desultory way, he also took one or two rock bands under his wing, more as a rock and roll enthusiast than as a calculating businessman and with small financial success.

Only this autumn he had been arranging a new venture, a publishing company based in Ireland, which was to have redeemed his fortunes.

Michael was no staid or saintly man and would not have wished to be portrayed as one. Much of his life was disorderly in the extreme. Even his most uncensorious friends could find him exasperating until they were disarmed yet again by his matchless charm. He had a true and rare gift for friendship and in the end it is not so much his ability and his kindness – though they were real – that he is remembered for. It is his very recklessness and his absurd high spirits in adversity.

Quotes from a collective memoir by some of his friends, December 1982

One remembers Dempsey bursting with humour as though his own flights of fancy were astonishing him as much as everyone else. One remembers the courage and intelligence which drove his work – his absolute dislike of poor writing and thinking, his absolute enthusiasm and support, regardless of odds, for true vision and integrity in others. – Hilary Bailey

… the young Michael Dempsey soared high above the field on his trapeze, a perch he never really left all the time I knew him. He was full of ideas and enthusiasms for all manner of exciting projects. Of course, he took care rarely to publish a book, but he more than made up for this with his generosity about books that his rivals published. – J G Ballard

Dempsey’s irreverence for the literary world, his contempt for sham and hypocrisy in publishing circles and his commitment to his writers made him one of the most stimulating, admirable and endearing of friends. – Michael Moorcock