Lionel Leventhal

Lionel Leventhal is a British publisher of books on military history and related topics, whose eponymous company was established in 1967.

History

After working in a bookshop (1954–1956), Leventhal joined the publishing company of Herbert Jenkins Ltd, best known as the publisher of P. G. Wodehouse, and published his first military book in 1960. After a short time with Paul Hamlyn (1964–1966), Leventhal set up Arms & Armour Press in 1966.

Lionel Leventhal Limited came into being in 1967 as the holding company for the various publishing and other book-related companies run by its eponymous owner.

Arms and Armour Press

Founded at a time when few new publishing houses were being established, Arms and Armour Press began on Leventhal's kitchen table, but grew rapidly to be one of the United Kingdom's leading publishers of militaria and military history, with a stable of authors including some of the most renowned specialists in the field, including Ian V. Hogg, David G. Chandler and Steven Zaloga. In 1984, Arms & Armour Press was sold to Link House Books, which owned seven publishers, including Blandford.

The London Book Fair

In 1971, Clive Bingley and Leventhal organised The Specialist Publishers’ Exhibition for Librarians, with 22 exhibitors displaying titles on tabletops. Subsequently, they saw the Fair grow and go through a number of development and name changes, finally becoming The London Book Fair in 1977. The London Book Fair was sold in 1985 to Industrial & Trade Fairs (which later became Reed Exhibitions), by which time the number of exhibitors had increased to 520. He was video-interviewed at The London Book Fair 2017 as part of a surprise celebration of his 80th birthday.

Ken Trotman

1976 saw the acquisition of Ken Trotman Limited, the leading specialist bookseller of books on militaria, which was sold to its manager, Richard Brown, in 1984.

In 2017, Greenhill Books began publishing new military history books with new work by J. P. Cross, John Hussey, Anthony Rogers, Peter G. Tsouras and Martin Pegler. In 2018 Greenhill Books published the first English language translation of the memoir of the Russian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and the memoir of Elena Rzhevskaya, the Russian SMERSH agent who found Hitler's teeth in the Berlin bunker in 1945. and Jens Müller.

Griffin

In 1985 Leventhal purchased, with partner Clive Bingley, the STM publishing house of Charles Griffin, which specialised in publishing books on statistics. Griffin was sold 18 months later to Hodder Arnold. Interviewed by The Bookseller magazine at the Bologna Book Fair in April 2019, Michael Leventhal noted the children's imprint "was a certainly a change from the Battle of the Bulge and books about snipers". Michael Leventhal was interviewed for the WorldKidLit blog in September 2020 about the birth of the Green Bean Books imprint.

In March 2021, Green Bean Books launched a new book award celebrating Jewish history, festival and values, working in conjunction with Jewish Book Week. The winners of the award were announced in March 2022. The winner of the illustration prize was Sharon Spitz and the winner of the writing prize was Carol Isaacs. The award was repeated in 2023 and the winner of the text award was Dina Leifer, and the winner of the illustration award was Mel Zohar. A third competition was launched in April 2023. and the winners were announced in March 2024: the story winner prize was won by Berliner Julie Form, and the illustration prize was won by Ukrainian-born Julia Krasovitsky. Both winners live in Germany. A fourth competition was launched by Green Bean Books and the Jewish Literary Foundation in April 2024. A fifth and final competition was launched in May 2025.