FERGAL TOBIN

FERGAL TOBIN was born in 1948 and educated at University College Dublin where he studied History, English literature and Philosophy. After some years in London, he returned to Ireland and joined Gill & Macmillan - the biggest publishing house in the country - as a commissioning editor. In 1994 he became Publishing Director, the position he still holds. He was president of the Irish Book Publishers' Association from 2002 to 2004, in which year he became Irish delegate to the Federation of European Publishers. He is currently President of FEP, which position he will hold until the middle of 2012.

His publishing has been mainly non-fiction, focusing on history, biography, politics and current affairs. He was responsible for the Encyclopaedia of Ireland (2003), a single-volume reference work comprising more than 5,000 articles by almost 1,000 contributors. It has been the largest single publishing project undertaken by an Irish commercial publisher in modern times.