Gillon Aitken

Gillon Reid Aitken (29 March 1938 – 28 October 2016) was an English literary agent and founder of the agency Aitken Alexander Associates.

[1] He was born in Calcutta, India, and spent his early years in Darjeeling, before attending boarding-school in the UK.

Skipping university, he studied Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists in London, and then worked in Berlin for British intelligence.

As a literary translator, Aitken translated two books of short stories by Pushkin, as well as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's gulag classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

[3] Aitken's will established the Charlotte Aitken Trust in her memory: it "aims to continue Gillon’s work of encouraging literary talent".