Jamie Byng

Byng grew up in the village of Abbots Worthy in Hampshire, England.^[2] The second son of the 8th Earl of Strafford and his first wife Jennifer May, he is a brother of the author Lady Georgia Byng, and through his stepfather, Sir Christopher Bland (the former chairman of the BBC, British Telecom and Royal Shakespeare Company), he is the half-brother of Archie Bland, print journalist and former deputy editor of The Independent.^[3][4]

Byng was educated at Winchester College, an independent boarding-school for boys in the cathedral city of Winchester in Hampshire, Southern England, followed by the University of Edinburgh.^[5] While attending the university, he ran a funk, reggae, and rare groove night club named "Chocolate City" (after the Parliament classic) at The Venue with his first wife, Whitney McVeigh,^[6] with whom he has two children – a daughter Marley and son Leo. Whitney McVeigh is the daughter of a socialite mother and her father is an American banker.^[7][2] Byng and McVeigh separated in 2001, and in 2005 Byng married literary agent Elizabeth Sheinkman,^[8][9] with whom he has two children, Ivy and Nathaniel.^[10] Byng separated from Sheinkman in 2016 and married Silvia Gimenez Varela in 2021 and they have one child.^{[citation needed]}

After graduating, he convinced Scottish publisher Stephanie Wolfe Murray to give him a job at Canongate, then a respected but still somewhat marginalised Scottish company founded in 1973,^[11] which he joined as an intern.^[12] When Canongate was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1994, Byng, then in his mid-20s, instigated a buyout, aided by his business partner Hugh Andrew, his stepfather (former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland) and then father-in-law (co-chairman of the multinational investment bank Salomon Smith Barney).^[5] His first move in overhauling the company's image was to establish the ultra-hip Payback and Rebel Inc imprints, dedicated to championing cult authors.^[13][5] The Pocket Canons (1998) published in partnership with Matthew Darby was Byng's first runaway success: selected books from the Bible individually packaged with new introductions by the Dalai Lama among others. In the wake of the two-million selling, Booker-winning Life of Pi (2001),^[11] Canongate won Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2003, reportedly posting pre-tax profits of more than £1 million for that year.

Byng is the initiator and chair of World Book Night,^[14] an event in which on 5 March 2011 (following World Book Day on 3 March) one million books – 40,000 copies of each of 25 carefully selected titles – were given away to members of the public in the UK and Ireland. It entailed 20,000 "givers" each distributing 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they chose.^[15]