My father, David Attwooll, who has died aged 67, was a pioneering publisher, fine drummer and critically acclaimed poet. He was passionate about people and social justice, and he had a visionary belief in the power of information. He was the perfect English gentleman with a wild blues soul.
Son of Derek Attwooll, a civil engineer, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Hunt), David was born in Twickenham, south-west London, and grew up in Thames Ditton at the beginning of the optimistic postwar period. At the age of 13, David went to Lancing college in West Sussex, where he formed his first band, The Blues Roar, and started his amateur cricket career. In 1967 David was the first of his family to go to university, earning a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. It was there that his love of literature and music flourished; he published poems in student magazines and became the founding drummer of the avant-rock band Henry Cow, supporting Pink Floyd at the college ball.
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