He was born and brought up in Henley-on-Thames, the youngest child of the publisher Sir Rupert Hart-Davis ( 1907 – 1999 ) and his second wife Catherine Comfort Borden-Turner.

He was married ( 1965 – 1995 ) to Adrienne Alpin, with whom he had two sons Damon Hart-Davis and Jason Hart-Davis, and now lives with psychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore, whom he married on 19 June 2010.

Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis ( 28 August 1907 – 8 December 1999 ) was an English publisher, editor and man of letters.

Founding his publishing company in 1946, Hart-Davis was praised for the quality of the firm's publications and production ; but he refused to cater to public tastes, and the firm eventually lost money.

Hart-Davis was born in Kensington, London.

He was legally the son of Richard Hart-Davis, a stockbroker, and his wife Sybil née Cooper, but by the time of his conception the couple were estranged, though still living together, and Sybil Hart-Davis had many lovers at that period.

Hart-Davis was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, though he found university life not to his taste and left after less than a year.

Hart-Davis decided to become an actor, and he studied at the Old Vic, where he came to realise that he was not a talented enough actor to succeed, and he turned instead to publishing in 1929, joining William Heinemann Ltd. as an office boy and assistant to the managing director Charley Evans.

Hart-Davis was a close friend of Ransome, sharing an enthusiasm for cricket and rugby ( but not fishing ).

The second partner, Wren Howard, was " even tighter " than Cape, and neither of them liked fraternising with authors, which they left to Hart-Davis.

In World War II Hart-Davis volunteered for military service as a private soldier, but was soon commissioned into the Coldstream Guards.

After the war, Hart-Davis was unable to obtain satisfactory terms from Jonathan Cape to return to the company, and in 1946 he struck out on his own, founding Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, in partnership with David Garnett and Teddy Young and with financial backing from Eric Linklater, Arthur Ransome, H. E. Bates, Geoffrey Keynes, and Celia and Peter Fleming.

In 1946 paper was still rationed ; the firm used Garnett's ex-serviceman's ration, but as only one ex-serviceman's ration could be used per firm it could not use that of Hart-Davis.

By the mid-fifties, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd could no longer sustain an independent existence and in 1956 it was absorbed into the Heinemann group.

The Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd logo was a woodcut of a fox, with a background of oak leaves.

Hart-Davis was described by The Times as " the king of editors ".

Hart-Davis was a great-great-great-grandson of William IV.

From 1957 to 1969, Hart-Davis was chairman of the London Library.

Merlin Holland's Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters ( 2003 ) was dedicated " To the memory of Rupert Hart-Davis, with love and gratitude.

The book was first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. in 1956 and in paperback by Penguin Books in 1959 and has remained in print ever since.

The hoard was number 7 in the list of British archaeological finds selected by experts at the British Museum for the 2003 BBC Television documentary Our Top Ten Treasures presented by Adam Hart-Davis.

Also in the early years Hart-Davis secured Ray Bradbury for his firm, recognising the quality of a science fiction author who also wrote poetry.

Hart-Davis also owned a Speedy, finished in pink and yellow.

* Man Of Letters: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Literary Impresario Rupert Hart-Davis ( 2005 )

Heat, Thermodynamics, and Statistical Physics, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, Harcourt, Brace, & World.

Reprints: Hart-Davis Macgibbon Ltd. 1970.

Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960.

London: R. Hart-Davis, 1953.

* Walter R. Fuchs: Computers: Information Theory and Cybernetics, Rupert Hart-Davis Educational Publications, 1971.

* Beerbohm, Max Last Theatres 1904-1910 London: Rupert Hart-Davis 1970.

" A British view of Dreiser came from the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis: " Theodore Dreiser's books are enough to stop me in my tracks, never mind his letters — that slovenly turgid style describing endless business deals, with a seduction every hundred pages as light relief.

* Hart-Davis, Rupert ( ed ), Lyttelton / Hart-Davis Letters Vol 5, John Murray, London 1983.

* Ziegler, Philip, Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters Chatto and Windus, London, 2004.

London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1970.

* Wightman, E. M. ( 1970 ) Roman Trier and the Treveri London: Hart-Davis.

Adam John Hart-Davis ( born 4 July 1943 ) is an English polymath, comprising scientist, author, photographer, historian and broadcaster, well known in the UK for presenting the BBC television series Local Heroes and What the Romans Did for Us, the latter spawning several spin-off series involving the Victorians, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and the Ancients.

His siblings are the journalist Duff Hart-Davis and Bridget, the dowager Lady Silsoe.

He is an uncle of the journalist Alice Hart-Davis and IT author Guy Hart-Davis.

Blunden and his friend Rupert Hart-Davis regularly opened the batting for a publisher's eleven in the 1930s ( Blunden insisted on batting without gloves ).

After relinquishing control of the firm, Hart-Davis concentrated on writing and editing, producing collections of letters and other works which brought him the sobriquet " the king of editors.

The second marriage became dysfunctional, although husband and wife remained on good terms and stayed together until their children were grown up, when Hart-Davis and Comfort divorced.

Hart-Davis organised fund-raising on a grand scale, including an auction, with E. M. Forster offering the manuscript of A Passage to India, and T. S. Eliot, a duplicate manuscript of The Waste Land.

* A page on the genealogical connections of the Hart-Davis family

In the show, Adam Hart-Davis, dressed in the pink and yellow cycling clothes that would became the show's trademark, rode around the YTV region ( including Yorkshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire ) on a matching pink and yellow bicycle, stopping in a particular area to tell the stories of scientists that lived or were born there.

These stories were embellished by experiments, performed on the street by Hart-Davis, generally using bits of wood and junk from a trailer on his bike.

Since then, Hart-Davis has moved on to other shows, and the bbc. co. uk Local Heroes pages have now been deleted, suggesting that no further series are planned.

David Dickinson, John Prescott, Robin Cook, Gandalf, David Cameron, Magneto and Ian McKellen, Professor Robert Winston, Dr Rowan Williams, David Blunkett, Tom Paulin, Saddam Hussein, Peter Mandelson, Graham Norton, Martin Jarvis, Trevor McDonald ( on radio ), Bob Geldof, Ken Livingstone, Brian Blessed, Luciano Pavarotti, Monty Don, Richard Briers, Patrick Stewart, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Toby Ziegler, Donald Rumsfeld, Adam Hart-Davis, Hannibal Lecter ( on radio ), Lord Voldemort ( on radio ), Hercule Poirot, Second Doctor & Patrick Troughton, Bernard Matthews, Rocky Balboa, Al Gore, George Lamb

Rupert Hart-Davis collected and published a collection of his essays on cricket, Cricket All His Life, which John Arlott called " the best written of all books on cricket.