Colin Ellis Franklin, FSA (8 October 1923 – 17 May 2020)[1] was an English writer, bibliographer, book-collector and antiquarian bookseller.
Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, into an affluent and influential British Jewish family.
He was the son of Muriel Frances Waley (1894–1976) and Ellis Arthur Franklin (1894–1964), a London merchant banker.
[2] After Oundle, he studied at St John's College, Oxford, and worked for some years in publishing (at Routledge in London) before moving into antiquarian bookselling.
On 19 April 2019, he was appointed to the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur by the President of France in recognition of his service on HMS Kimberley in August 1944, when he was a junior officer taking part in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France.