People lover, adrenaline freak, poker player and true romantic... the Observer’s former poetry editor remembered by his publisher
• Al Alvarez remembered by playwright Patrick Marber
Al Alvarez, who died last week, was one of Bloomsbury’s most glamorous authors. For the last two decades of his extraordinary and varied life we had the great luck of being his publisher. Our first encounter with Al was through one of his lifelong addictions, poker; we published an illustrated book with that title. Al was in his 70s then. By the time I met him, he had climbed mountains, flown planes, driven fast cars, won and lost money, broken hearts and had his broken. He had published novels, poetry, anthologies and a number of unusual nonfiction books. Inevitably he was slowing down; mountains and epic drinking were in the past. He could still deal a mean set of cards and do what he did best, write. A sucker for men who make me laugh, I immediately fell under his spell. As did our all-male design department, who took to playing poker in their lunch hours.
Al and his wife, Anne, lived in a minuscule cottage in Hampstead, north London. To get to Al’s study you had to climb to the top, a mountaineering exercise of its own. There he sat, sucking on his pipe, cracking jokes and swearing a lot, usually about his age. “I’m past my sell-by date,” he often complained. The house was crammed with books and pictures, including work by his friend the Australian painter Sidney Nolan, who he had met in New Mexico.
Pondlife was a moving meditation on life’s small pleasures... or, as he said, the three Ss – swimming, sleep and sex
Related: Al Alvarez obituary
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