Alister Taylor

Rupert Alister Halls Taylor (21 September 1943 – 9 September 2019) was an innovative and controversial New Zealand publisher.

He published The Little Red Schoolbook in the 1970s (widely criticised by morals campaigners for its subversive content),[1] and Tim Shadbolt's autobiographical Bullshit and Jellybeans, as well as significant works on artists C. F. Goldie and Gustavus von Tempsky. Notorious in the New Zealand publishing industry for paying his debts slowly, if at all, he was bankrupted in the early 1980s at the instigation of the Publishers' Association. Discharged ten years later, he began a new publishing venture, reissuing some of his earlier publications in edited and updated form. Together with two other editors, he edited the 12th edition of Who's Who in New Zealand. He then established New Zealand Who's Who Aotearoa, with the first volume published in 1992.[2] In 2001 he featured in the London Daily Mirror Sorted column by Penman & Greenwood; the report headlined "Full medal racket" alleged that Taylor had targeted national heroes in a publishing con.

In 2005 he was again in financial difficulty when the New South Wales Department of Fair Trading was granted an injunction banning him from marketing a range of non-existent publications about prominent Australians. The Supreme Court found that he had solicited fees from Australians to be included in a publication entitled the Australian Roll of Honour series, which did not exist.[3]

His partner from 1978 to 2004 was the journalist and politician Deborah Coddington, with whom he had three children.[2]