Anthony Stancomb was educated at Wellington College, St Andrews University and the London School of Film.
He first worked on Feature films and political documentaries, before joining a private mercy airlift operation that was shot down in Biafra; After that, he joined the BBC, and later ITV, where for seven years he produced programs about social issues and the arts.
Leaving television, he set up his own company to promote and sell British contemporary art to galleries abroad, and during the next twenty years he created a worldwide distribution network whose annual turnover was over £10 million.
On a relief convoy with his wife to the Croatian refugee camps in the 1990’s, he discovered the island of Vis, and fell in love with it – and when the war ended, he sold the company and moved there. Once on the island, he discovered it had strong historical links with England (particularly with cricket), and he began to write about it.
I was recommended to the Andrew Lownie Agency by a publisher who said that as my book was about the quirks of life on an obscure island in the middle of nowhere, Andrew was one of the few who had enough breadth of vision to consider it and enough drive to make it happen.
I contacted Andrew with a shell of book and was immediately pointed in the right direction. The advice I got was very helpful and very rigorous, and I was extremely impressed by the constant support that enabled me to get the book to a publishable stage.
Added to that, he has a very informative and highly entertaining website – one of very few. I recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the oddities of the publishing world and wanting a good laugh.