Literary agent who championed Paul Lynch and John Boyne
Simon Trewin, the literary agent who represented John Boyne and helped Paul Lynch win the Booker Prize, has died of a brain tumour aged 60. In 2016, Trewin received a manuscript by Lynch, a Limerick-born author with two respectfully reviewed novels. No publisher wanted his third. 'I want to save your career,' Trewin said. It took 14 months to make the deal. Lynch's novel Grace became the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year 2018. Five years later, Lynch won the Booker Prize for his dystopian parable Prophet Song. Trewin was the first person he acknowledged: 'Thank you for being my consigliere,' Lynch said.
Trewin represented author John Boyne, writer of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, for his entire career. He signed teenage author Catherine Banner when she was 16. He gave Chloé Esposito the titles for her thriller trilogy Mad (2017), Bad (2018) and Dangerous to Know (2020) and helped her secure deals worth £2m. According to his fellow author and client, 'Some agents are fair-weather friends. Not Simon Trewin. He represented me for 30 years, taking on my first book when I was still a postgraduate student. Like all his clients, I could depend on his honesty, his loyalty, his wit, and the poker-faced negotiating skills that belied his natural shyness.'
Family legacy and early life
Simon Courtenay Trewin was born on 24 May 1966 in north London. His 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, where he acquired and edited Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark. His mother, Sue (née Merry), was a marriage guidance counsellor. 'Nobody escaped his curious and often playful questions: clients, people he met on the street, the carers who attended him in his final illness,' said those close to him.
He attended Highgate school, as his father had, and studied drama at the University of Kent. His theatrical interests were evident early: on a school trip to East Berlin, he was detained for eight hours at Checkpoint Charlie for wearing a badge advertising a production of Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
Career in theatre and literary agency
After university, Trewin worked as an assistant stage manager on West End shows, including Harold Pinter's The Caretaker with Donald Pleasence and Ronald Harwood's Another Time with Albert Finney, as well as pantomime and summer seasons. A favourite anecdote involved a backstage encounter with Rod Hull and Emu: though Hull believed himself alone, Trewin noticed that Emu turned to read the company noticeboard as he passed along the corridor.
In 1991, he worked on a revival of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Cabinet Minister. He mistimed a sound cue, causing star Derek Nimmo to raise a flute to his lips and produce the sound of bagpipes. One scene required him to pass a prop baby to Helen Adie, the actor playing the French maid. They married in 1992 at St Paul's, Covent Garden. Their son Jack was born a year later, by which time Trewin had joined a literary agency.
Founding United Agents and representing Ian Fleming estate
Trewin began at Sheil Land Associates, then moved to Peters Fraser and Dunlop before founding United Agents with a group of colleagues in 2007, a famous schism in the business. At United Agents, he represented the Ian Fleming estate. 'It appealed to his sense of style and his sense of humour. He did not take the ritualised meetings – in achingly stylish offices where Martinis were shaken endlessly – as seriously as some of the participants,' according to colleagues. He loved gossip and mischief: he once sold a memoir by Cliff Richard. 'It's printed double-spaced so you can read between the lines,' he said.
In 2012, he left United to head the London office of William Morris Endeavor, a move that satisfied his restless instincts and allowed him to acquire two vintage sports cars (one red, one Yves Klein blue). However, the office culture did not delight him. Founding his own independent agency in 2019 freed him from working London and Los Angeles hours simultaneously.
Garage Press and community education
At age 10, Trewin's father took him to the Times printworks on Gray's Inn Road, sparking a passion for printing. He acquired Gloria, an 1870s platen press of the type once used by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. He established the Garage Press workshop and later the Print Room at Bell House, a volunteer-run community education centre in Dulwich, south London. There, he ran printing workshops, collected block type, made his own ink from oak apple gall, and gathered a community of 'inkaholics' to join the writers he had already assembled. On his 60th birthday, a few weeks after his tumour diagnosis, he gathered friends together in a room full of his prints.
Trewin is survived by his wife 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.
