[5][6][7] Malcolm Waterstone had previously worked in Calcutta in his fifty-year career with P. R. Buchanan & Co., a Glasgow tea company operating in India, of which he became a partner.
[8][9] He was appointed MBE in 1942, whilst serving as a Captain (temporary Major) in the Royal Army Service Corps.
Ugly, unpretentious, nice big garden, fields at the end of it" in Crowborough, East Sussex, England.
His personal model was a heavily stocked and heavily marketed literary booksellers with stores ranging from the large to the huge (i.e. Waterstone's London Piccadilly), driven by the recruitment of highly read staff, almost all Oxbridge or Russell Group arts graduates straight out of university.
The model was successful and, by ten years later in 1992, Waterstone's had grown to be the largest bookseller group in Europe.
Waterstone was a chairman or board member of English International (1987–1992), the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1990–1997), Portman House Trust (1994–1996), the Academy of Ancient Music (1990–1995), Sinclair-Stevenson Publishers (1989–1994), Virago Press (1993–1995), Jazz FM (1991–1993), the London International Festival of Theatre (1990–1992), the Elgar Foundation (1992–1998), the British Library (1995–1997), King's College London Library (2000–2002), Yale University Press (1992–2013), Chelsea Stores (1996–2007), FutureStart (1992–2009), Virago Press (1995–1996), Hill Samuel UK Emerging Companies Investment Trust plc (1996–2000) and Downing Classic VCT (1998–2003).
[11] He has sat on the Booker Prize Management Committee, and acted as the Chairman of Judges for the Prince's Youth Business Trust Awards.
[16] Waterstone supports the Labour Party (he chose Clement Attlee as his 'hero' in the initial 2001 BBC Radio 4 series Great Lives).
He is a campaigner also for the democratically desirable proportional representation of House of Lords membership, based on the general election popular vote.