Peter Usborne obituary
Publisher whose eponymous company changed the face of children’s nonfiction with its fact-filled illustrated books
Peter Usborne, who has died aged 85, created a publishing company that changed the look and feel of nonfiction books for children. Although they were widely used in schools, Usborne books became a household brand, particularly associated with finding things out at home, through attractive illustrated, fact-filled publications that entertained children with high-quality pictures and accessible bites of information.
Before his publishing career, Peter was a co-founder in 1961 and the first managing director of the satirical magazine Private Eye. It grew out of a humorous magazine called Mesopotamia that Peter launched while a student at Balliol College, Oxford, with fellow students, among them John Wells and Richard Ingrams, as writers. On graduating, he used his best networking skills to secure funding to get the magazine launched, but left in 1965 to study for an MBA at the Insead (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) business school in Fontainebleau, France.
