MERLIN Unwin is a wizard at conjuring up a good read, and so he should be. Three generations of publishing run through his veins and it shows in his love for the written word, his knack of spotting an author and his good-humoured approach to his work.

It all goes back to 1914 when his grandfather, Stanley Unwin, set up a publishing house in London with George Allen, capturing writers like philosopher Bertrand Russell, explorer Thor Heyerdahl, Gandhi, Sir Richard (Kama Sutra) Burton and radical politicians and thinkers.

But it was Merlin's father Rayner, who as a nine-year-old boy-reader was paid tuppence to read manuscripts for children's books, who persuaded Unwin Senior to publish the much-rejected The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.

Merlin said: "The Lord of the Rings is father's own publishing legacy. Had he lived beyond 2000, he would have been amazed by the hype and hullabaloo over the film, the rights for which were sold with the business in 1989."

A year later, Merlin and Karen Unwin started again and set up their own small publishing house in an upstairs room in Camden Town. Within a year they were scraping a living and made a decision to leave London for a base in middle England.

"Our books were classic countryside - fishing, angling and shooting, and we needed to be centrally placed to meet our authors," he said.

"We just happened upon Ludlow and loved it," Karen added. "Our first office was a small room at the bottom end of Corve Street. From there it was premises above an Indian restaurant in Broad Street and we finally settled above the Old Post Office.

"Ludlow people are very supportive and we have recently tied in with the Food Festival. Our authors often visit us, not just for editorial purposes but for the fishing. Jeremy Paxman, who writes for us, fell in love with Ludlow and came back to talk at the Festival."

It's fair to say fisher folk of all ages are hooked on Merlin Unwin, the biggest publishers on angling and fishing in Ireland.

The book list runs from A History of Flyfishing by Conrad Voss Bark - the first person to read the news on television - to the bestseller and collectors item A Passion for Angling, based on the BBC series with Chris Yates, Bob James and Hugh Miles.

Recent expansion into general countryside books saw the publication of The Adventures of a Bacon Curer by Maynard Davies and Jill Mason's Townies' Guide to the Countryside, said by The Times to be "a book stuffed with facts, which will enlighten even farming and village folk".

Unusually for modern publishers, Unwin has its own warehouse, managed by David Morgan on the Ludlow trading estate. Around 120,000 books are stored, with sales reaching 40,000 a year.

"We can handle every aspect of publishing from commissioning and editing, through to sales, distribution, marketing and publicity."

Karen, a trained journalist, takes on the editing and commissioning. Until recently, under her own name Karen McCall, she published and edited London Police Pensioner magazine.

In the busy, open plan office, a notice board is littered with complimentary letters from Royals, politicians, actors, and actresses who enjoy the peaceful pleasures of fishing.

It's there that the team behind the name - accounts manager Gill Bissell, Jo Potter, marketing and sales, Hilary Daltry, accounts assistant, and Gale Ellis, sales - handle all the day-to-day business. Karen and Merlin are the advanced party netting a new tale or two.

Eighty-seven-years on, the Unwin publishing history is flourishing. Call 01584 877456 for the catalogue.