In more recent times, the company added lifestyle titles such as its flagship brand The Week, which is published in the UK and the United States.
He grew up poor in northeast Surrey, for a time living in his grandparents' tiny terrace house in Thames Ditton, not far from his birthplace, with his mother, Dorothy, and brother Julian.
[3]In 1964, Dennis moved into his first bedsit at 13 St Kildas Road, Harrow, earning rent playing in R&B bands and working as a window display artist in department stores.
He was quickly promoted to co-editor and became involved in the longest conspiracy trial in English history over the infamous "Schoolkids OZ" issue.
They included a sexually explicit Rupert the Bear cartoon strip, which proved too much for the authorities and resulted in the arrest of Anderson, Neville and Dennis, who were charged with "conspiracy to corrupt public morals".
The OZ offices in Princedale Road, Notting Hill, and the homes of its editors were repeatedly raided by Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad.
[7] At the conclusion of the trial, the "OZ Three", defended by John Mortimer, were found not guilty on the charge of "Conspiracy to deprave and corrupt the Morals of the Young of the Realm", but were convicted on two lesser offences and sentenced to imprisonment.
[10] UK-based cartoonists published by Dennis included Edward Barker, Michael J. Weller, Dave Gibbons, Bryan Talbot, and Brian Bolland.
In 1987, with Peter Godfrey and Bob Bartner, he co-founded MicroWarehouse, a company that pioneered direct IT marketing via high quality catalogues.
[13] In 1995, Dennis Publishing created Maxim, a title that began on the back of a beer mat and became the world's biggest selling men's lifestyle magazine and global brand.
[18] The launch of this book was accompanied by the first of Dennis's UK-wide poetry reading tours entitled "Did I Mention the Free Wine?".
Audiences were offered fine French wine from Dennis's personal cellar while watching him perform his poetry on stage.
[19]: 297–299 With the second publication of A Glass Half Full, by Random House in the US in 2004, Dennis embarked on a 15-date coast-to-coast tour of the US (including another RSC performance in New York).
[23] Five more poetry books followed, When Jack Sued Jill: Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times,[24] Island of Dreams,[25] Homeless in my Heart.
He had appeared as the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, hosted by Kirsty Young, first broadcast on 12 August 2007;[31] his chosen favourite record, book and luxury item were "One Too Many Mornings" by Bob Dylan, The Dictionary of National Biography, and "a very long stainless steel shaft to encourage pole-dancing mermaids!"
[32] In an interview with Ginny Dougary published in The Times in 2008, Dennis said that in the early 1980s he had killed a man who had been abusing a woman he knew, by pushing him off a cliff.
Trees include native varieties of Oak, Ash, Lime, Beech, Hornbeam, Hazel, Field Maple, Aspen, Hawthorn, Willow, Alder, Black Poplar, Holly, Wild Cherry, Rowan and occasional stands of Scots pine, along with numerous shrubs and bushes.
[38] On Friday, 20 September 2013, Dennis planted the scheme's millionth tree, an oak sapling, at a ceremony attended by local residents, council members, forestry officials and employees.
[40] Dennis had one of the largest private collections of original bronze sculpture held in his purpose-built Garden of Heroes and Villains.
[41] It contains more than 40 sculptures, life and a quarter in size, which include early man attacking a woolly mammoth, Galileo, Einstein, Winston Churchill, Crick and Watson, and more recent "heroes" such as Stephen Hawking, and is open to the public once a year as part of the National Gardens Scheme.
[45] While staying at Mandalay Estate, Dennis wrote:[46] A ball of fire is spilling in the sea The empty sky flamingo-pink and grey Cicada songs creak out the end of day A choir of tree-frogs whistle: "Come to me!"
In 2014 Dennis worked successfully on a programme with the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines government to give every secondary school pupil a laptop, totalling 12,500.