About John Hamilton

John Hamilton, the art director at the publishing company Penguin Random House, has died. Someone whose work is known to more people than his name, one would think, and whose demise wouldn’t cause a major stir beyond his friends and family and the worlds of publishing and design. But, wait, what’s this in the Mirror?

Now Jamie [Oliver] has had more bad news with the loss of his friend John Hamilton...

And in Hello!

...the celebrity chef paid a heartfelt tribute to John Hamilton, who was his art director at Penguin books...

And what’s this in Woman & Home?

...Jamie was struck by tragedy again, when he learned that John Hamilton...

We’re supposedly a less hierarchical, less deferential society these days but it seems that we’ve just built a whole new hierarchy, where a death can only be acknowledged if it makes a celebrity sad, and he says so on Instagram.