My father, David Gadsby, saw the role of the educational publisher not as a mere purveyor of books, but as “changing what happens in schools”. He had noticed that school songbooks offered beautiful or stirring songs – but not much fun. In the 1970s, David, who has died aged 92, launched the A&C Black range of children’s songbooks, which opened a lighter, brighter possibility for songs in schools: real children’s songs, full of fun, nonsense, irreverence – and childhood.
David delighted in finding tongue-twisting titles like Appuskidu and Okki-Tokki-Unga, and decorating them with hilarious illustrations from the hands of the great David McKee, and the wonderful Bernard Cheese. He understood, helped by his many interactions with primary school teachers, that simple piano accompaniments and audio opened up the songs to many more teachers – and, through them, to many more children.
Working with Peggy Blakeley, the headteacher at my sister Tat’s primary school, David took a similar approach to poetry for schools, producing a wide range of unusual anthologies with unexpected, often jokey poems to grab children’s attention, printed on high-quality coloured paper.
David had joined the publisher A & C Black at the age of 25, keen to make his mark as an editor. Finding the company struggling to recruit authors for a geography course to follow their successful launch of Looking at History, David boldly volunteered himself and his wife Jean to write the course. Looking at Geography took the unconventional approach of viewing topics through the lives of children and workers in different countries and industries, and the four volumes quickly became a huge success. First published in 1957, the fourth edition came out nearly 20 years later, and over 3 million copies were sold.
The younger son of Dorothea and Harry Gadsby, David was born and grew up in Doncaster, where his father worked for the railways. After leaving Doncaster grammar school, David studied English literature at University College London, where he met Jean Stimson, who was studying economics. They married in 1954 and had four children, Joanna (Jo), Oliver, Tamsin (Tat) and me.
David worked briefly at the Wellcome Historical Medical Library until a friend told him he was making a mistake and should apply for a job he had seen advertised, as an editor with A & C Black. He worked there until he finally retired at 70. David became joint managing director in 1973 , working in a happy partnership with Charles Black, whose family had run the firm since it was founded in 1807.
They already had a strong reference publishing list, including Who’s Who, and David and Charles worked together to expand into different areas, acquiring small publishers to develop their nautical and bird-watching lists. David took an active interest in Who’s Who, writing the preface for the 150th edition and organising a launch party at the National Portrait Gallery, attended by many of Who’s Who’s most famous subjects.
My father loved nothing more than being at the centre of large family gatherings. Naturally competitive, he would invent games and needed nothing more than the presence of a grandchild, a conker and a stick to create a new challenge.
David and Jean’s marriage ended in divorce, and in 1989 he married Gillian Bennett. She survives him, along with his children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
