Jon Croft

Resisting the opportunity to accept a place at Christ's College Cambridge to read English Jon happily accepted instead a place at Bristol University to read Theology, managing miraculously to graduate with a lightly fought for ‘gentleman's degree’. After graduating there followed a brief career as a writer of plays, political satire and children's stories, some of which found there way onto BBC Radio, BBC television and ITV amongst other broadcasting outposts. In 1979 Jon founded Absolute Press, arguably the longest extant specialist cookery publisher in the UK. Short lived but influential theatre, biography and gay publishing imprints wove their way round the cookery narrative, though food and drink remained At the heart of Absolute's output. In partnership with his star author Keith Floyd, along with key players in broadcasting and publishing at the BBC, Jon was responsible for revolutionising the way in which cookery programmes and associated tie-in publishing were presented to viewers. A gift that might well now be less well favourably received than it was at the time . In 1991 Jon was asked by Her Majesty's Government to represent it in Brussels to construct a plan to support funding of drama in translation from the smaller countries in the EC into the more mainstream European languages. It proved a great success. After 32 years of independent publishing Jon sold Absolute Press to Bloomsbury Publishing PLC where he now acts as a consulting Publisher on the Absolute list both in the UK and USA. His pioneering work in cookery publishing and his wide ranging knowledge of chefs and food professionals led to a meeting with 1000 Cookbooks co-founder Matt Cockerill at which it became instantly apparent that they shared a passion to bring to the world a wondrous culinary digital platform for the greater good. As well as being the recipient of a number of publishing and literary awards Jon is also a FRSA, a founding member of Black's club in Soho, London and an utterly focused seeker-out of convivial tables for lunch.