Veteran literary agent Michael Sissons was born to make paint. The Hull-based family firm Sissons Brothers & Co had been doing just that since the 18th century, at one point making "Hall's Distemper" once regarded as the best paint in the British Empire. The Second World War ended all that. His father, grandfather and cousin were killed in the conflict and the paint factory was destroyed during the blitz of Hull.
Instead of paint, Sissons fell "by accident" into ink in 1959 under the wing of the then formidable literary agent Augustus Dudley Peters, whose own son was killed in the last week of the war. In 1973 Sissons inherited the agency A D Peters & Co from its founder. "I knew from day one that it suited me down to the ground," he says. "I have never looked at the notion of another job since that day. I have never wished to do anything else, and I can still scarcely believe my luck."