WHO WE ARE
From left: Peter Whetman, unknown , David Butcher, David Chambers, David Fry... Does anyone recognise 'unknown', please?
A brief history of the PLA
Our governance today
Sebastian Carter
Vacant
Jim Maslen
Jim Maslen
David Butcher
Hon. Editor
The Private Library
Paul Nash
Publications Secretary
Richard Martin
Website & Marketing
Digital
Simon C. Hewett
Ed Jewell
Members of Council
• David Butcher
• David Fry
• Jim Maslen
• Richard Martin
• Paul Nash
• Peter Whetman
Meet our President,
Sebastian Carter
Sebastian was elected to the Presidency of The Private Libraries Association at the agm in September 2025, and he writes:
"I’m honoured to have been elected as President of the PLA. At the moment I see my role as a modest one, as I’m still learning on the job, and I’m happy to rely on the advice and help of the members of Council who are expanding the reach and range of the Association. I look forward keenly to my next three years in the post."
Sebastian Carter was born in 1941. He read English Literature and Architecture & Fine Arts at King’s College, Cambridge. After university he worked as a designer at John Murray and Ruari McLean’s office in London, and the Trianon Press in Paris, before joining his father Will Carter at the Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, which he later ran from Swan House in Over outside the town. He closed the workshop at the end of 2008.
At the Rampant Lions Press he produced a long series of fine editions. Highlights included Milton’s Areopagitica, Samuel Beckett’s As the Story was Told, and T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, as well as a number of typographical display pieces such as A Printer’s Dozen and In Praise of Letterpress.
Sebastian writes extensively on printing and typography. His Twentieth Century Type Designers (1987; new edition 1995; in paperback 2002) has become a standard work. In 2013 his The Rampant Lions Press: A narrative catalogue was published by Oak Knoll Press in the USA. He wrote the type design section of The History of the Monotype Corporation, published by the Printing Historical Society and Vanbrugh Press in 2014.
He reviewed regularly for The Times Literary Supplement, and contributed a number of entries to The Oxford Companion to the Book (2011) and the chapter on book design for The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (2019).
He was European editor of Parenthesis, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association, from 2008 to 2021. In 2013 Sebastian received the individual Laureate Award from the American Printing History Association.
"We welcome Sebastian Carter, President."
Past Presidents of the PLA
• Dr Reinhold Regensburger 1956-60 • D. J. Foskett 1961-63 • Dr Desmond Flower 1963-64 • Percy H. Muir 1964-65 • J. Rives Childs 1965-68 • Sir Arthur Elton Bt 1968-71 • Raymond Lister 1 971-74 • Ruari McLean 1974-77 • Douglas Cleverdon 1977-80 • Dr Glyn Tegai Hughes 1980-83 • Dr William B. Todd 1983-86 • John Russell Taylor 1986-89 • Peter Eaton 1989-92 • Dr Iain Bain 1992-95 • Robin de Beaumont 1995-98 • B. C. Bloomfield 1998-2001 • Colin Franklin 2001-04 • Dame Lynne Brindley 2004-07 • Keith Fletcher 2007-13 • Giles Mandelbrote 2013-2019 • Matthew Haley 2019-24