Martin Stone, British guitarist and bookseller, Died at 69

  Music

Martin Stone was born on December 11, 1946, Woking, Surrey and died on November 9, 2016, Versailles, France.

He was an English guitarist and rare book dealer.

A longtime resident of Fingest in Buckinghamshire, and latterly Paris.

Stone was a few years younger than his later musical partner Michael Moorcock but grew up in the same part of South London, knew the same book- and music-shops and had the same enthusiasms.

He was educated at Whitgift Grammar.

Martin initially wanted to be a journalist and began as a cub reporter on The Croydon Advertiser, interviewing Jimmy Page when he was still a session musician.

His passion for the guitar led him to become a musician.

Since the 1980s, Stone was earning much of his living as a bookseller, with an almost uncanny knack for finding ‘lost’ or famous books.

Stone was a great fan of M. P. Shiel, who first inspired his passion for book collecting and later book-selling.

Martin achieved international notoriety as a bookrunner. He was a major player in John Baxter’s memoir A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict.

Martin Stone was the subject of a limited edition photographic book Martin Stone, Bookscout by the California rare bookseller Peter Howard of Serendipity Books.

Stone appeared in the television documentary Without Walls: The Cardinal And The Corpse (Iain Sinclair / Chris Petit 1992).

Martin Stone was also known to be the basis for the character Nicholas Lane in Sinclair’s novel White Chappell, Scarlett Tracings (1987).

He died due to cancer.

Martin Stone passed away at 69 years old.