The co-founder of Pelican books, V. K. Krishna Menon, was a very important figure in Indian independence and a controversial diplomat and defence minister after

The co-founder of Pelican books, V. K. Krishna Menon, was a very important figure in Indian independence and a controversial diplomat and defence minister afterwards. He split with Allen Lane, I have heard, over a dispute over how commercial the venture should be - with Lane taking a more commercial viewpoint. This story is so obscure that I have never found any reliable source for this. I am glad to see Guardian acknowledging the role of Krishna Menon in the history of Penguin books and Pelican books - it seems vague even in the Wikipedia article on Krishna Menon. He also was pivotal in the non-aligned movement: what is now called the "third world". Originally the term denoted countries allied neither to the West nor to the Soviet Bloc, but now it has become synonymous with squalour. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_K_Krishna_Menon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_K_Krishna_Menon