Nigel Newton CBE is the Founder and Chief Executive of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. He was born and raised in San Francisco. He read English at Selwyn College, Cambridge and after working at Macmillan Publishers and Sidgwick & Jackson, he started Bloomsbury Publishing in 1986.
Bloomsbury now publishes 3000 books a year from its offices in the UK, US, India and Australia with 1250 staff. It is distinct from most other publishers in combining general and academic publishing.
Bloomsbury has published books by JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Susanna Clarke, Sarah J. Maas, Katherine Rundell, Samantha Shannon, Jennifer L. Armentrout and Rebecca Yarros amongst others. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje won the Golden Man Booker Prize as the best novel of the last 50 years. Bloomsbury is a leading academic publisher in the humanities and social sciences and a publisher of academic digital resources including Drama Online and the Churchill Archive Online.
In March 2025 he was appointed as a Trustee for the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to the publishing industry. He serves as a Member of the Advisory Committee of Cambridge University Libraries and President of Book Aid International. In 2020 he was awarded The LBF Lifetime Achievement Award and became an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.
He has previously served as a Board member of the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the Booker Prize Advisory Committee, Chairman of the Charleston Trust, Chair of World Book Day, President of the Publishers Association, Trustee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Chairman of the British Library Trust, head of the Selwyn Association and supporter of Cuckmere Haven SOS.
