His seemingly bufferish production anticipated many a 1960s vogue. He first published what is perhaps John Betjeman's finest poem, the terrifying Song Of A Nightclub Proprietress. Another was May Margaret Revell's discussion on her pet otters: having the freedom of her house they slept below her bed, where, in the small hours, they amused themselves by waking her with a tug at the springs. Profusely illustrated and elegantly designed, it was a natural home for such items as, say, a piece on a passion for junkshops or a history of beards - which pointed out that sages (Darwin, Tolstoy) tend to the long and straggly, while extroverts sport the type favoured by the early TV chef Philip Harben. Started in 1943, it had brought a lavish tinge to wartime book production, and in taking it over after the war, Hadfield made a stand against the prevailing austerity. This annual hardback miscellany regularly sold out in the weeks before Christmas. In 1959, his passion for art, cricket, jazz and East Anglia came together in the novel Love On A Branch Line, which is light, witty, even sexy, and now even more nostalgic than in the 1950s indeed, it is imbued with all the oddball charm that its author brought to editing the Saturday Book.

John Hadfield, who has died aged 92, was a 'bookman' the editor for 25 years of the Saturday Book, a dab hand at anthologies and for two decades a director of the publisher, George Rainbird.

Love on a Branch Line by John Hadfield