The Bookseller.com

7th January 2009

Clare Alexander is a literary agent with Aitken Alexander Associates, and ex-president of the Association of Authors’ Agents. She was formerly a publisher at Viking and Macmillan.

Pat Kavanagh: natural agent

22.10.08

Pat was never to be found in the aisles of Book Fairs and rarely at publishing parties, which she hated. Yet she brought to our industry a grace, dignity and honesty that will be sorely missed. Never vain (perhaps because she was such a great natural beauty), this most publicity-shy agent would be amazed to witness the outpouring of grief and loss which has greeted the news of her death. It came as a shock to all but those closest to her as she had characteristically decided to face the news of her diagnosis of cancer in private, with her husband Julian at her side.

Pat was a brilliant agent. She had an unerring ability to spot talent and an unwavering eye for anything false. To publishers and newspapers she was frequently terrifying, having turned her natural shyness into a negotiating technique that involved fathomless silence as the unfortunate on the line would try to fill the void with ever-higher offers until they reached a number she thought worthy of response. In person an ironically arched eyebrow could reduce anyone to stutters. But her demands were always fair, and a deal with Pat was one with which both parties felt satisfied.

Pat was fiercely loyal to friends and to her authors, many of whom were both. It was because she cared that the rare defection of a client caused her dismay and she must have hated it when the departure of Martin Amis to a more savage deal-broker was played out in the headlines. Just as she must have loathed the way the break up of Peters Fraser & Dunlop and the establishment of United Agents was treated in the media. She was the heart of the new enterprise rather than its leader, and throughout she kept her own council. She was 68. Her authors never doubted her integrity and followed her to United Agents to a man and woman.

She represented, amongst others, Sally Beauman, Margaret Drabble, Robert Harris, Blake Morrison, John Mortimer, Andrew Motion, Ruth Rendell, Posy Simmonds, Helen Simpson, Joanna Trollope, and the estates of Laurie Lee and Dirk Bogarde as well as her life’s partner, Julian Barnes - a diverse and stellar list.  She felt her place was in their shadow, in support and not in the public eye.  Similarly her integrity, experience and wisdom were invaluable to her colleagues in breaking away from PFD and setting up United Agents. But it is not only her friends, her authors and colleagues who will miss her: the publishing industry just lost its gold standard.