Simon Trewin, the literary agent who represented Booker prize winner Paul Lynch and founded the Garage Press, has died of a brain tumour aged 60.
Career highlights
In 2016, Trewin received a manuscript by Paul Lynch, a Limerick-born author with two respectfully reviewed novels behind him. No publisher wanted his third. 'I want to save your career,' Trewin said. It took 14 months to make the deal. Grace became the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year 2018. Five years later, Lynch won the Booker prize for Prophet Song. Trewin was the first person he acknowledged: 'Thank you for being my consigliere.'
He represented the author of this obituary for 30 years, and like all his clients, could depend on his honesty, loyalty, wit, and poker-faced negotiating skills. He gathered a community of writers who followed him from company to company. He was the first and only literary agent of John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He signed YA novelist Catherine Banner when she was 16. He gave Chloé Esposito titles for her trilogy of thrillers and helped her secure deals worth £2m.
Early life and family
Trewin's grandparents were theatre critics JC Trewin and Wendy Trewin. His father, Ion Trewin, was literary editor of the Times and publishing director of Hodder & Stoughton. His mother, Sue, was a marriage guidance counsellor. Born in north London, he attended Highgate school and studied drama at Kent. On a school trip to East Berlin, he was detained at Checkpoint Charlie for wearing a badge advertising a Dario Fo play.
After university, he worked as assistant stage manager on West End shows including Harold Pinter's The Caretaker and Ronald Harwood's Another Time, and in pantomime and summer seasons. A favourite anecdote involved a backstage encounter with Rod Hull and Emu. A 1991 revival of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Cabinet Minister was landmark, partly because he mistimed a sound cue that resulted in Derek Nimmo producing the sound of bagpipes. He met actor Helen Adie on that show; they married in 1992. Their son Jack was born a year later.
Agency work
He joined Sheil Land Associates, then Peters Fraser and Dunlop, before co-founding United Agents in 2007. There he represented the Ian Fleming estate. He loved gossip and mischief: he once sold a memoir by Cliff Richard. 'It's printed double-spaced,' he said, 'so you can read between the lines.' In 2012 he left to head the London office of William Morris Endeavor, then founded his own independent agency in 2019.
Printing passion
At age 10, his father took him to the Times printworks. Later, he acquired Gloria, an 1870s platen press once used by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. He established the Garage Press and the Print Room at Bell House, a volunteer-run community education centre in Dulwich. He ran printing workshops, collected block type, made his own ink from oak apple gall, and gathered a community of 'inkaholics'. On his 60th birthday, weeks after his tumour diagnosis, he gathered friends in a room full of his prints.
He is survived by Helen, an artist and poet, and his son, Jack, also an artist. Simon Courtenay Trewin, literary agent, born 24 May 1966; died 25 June 2026.
