Penguin Books, which has just celebrated its fiftieth birthday, is widely known through its paperback publishing as the great populariser of literature in the English language.

Penguin was not, of course, the inventor of paper bindings, which go back several centuries. It was not even the initiator of quality paperback series which had been common in Europe long before Penguin was hatched. However, Penguin provided a consistency in quality of content, production and marketing that made good books in English available to almost everyone.