Paul Raymond (publisher)
English publisher (1925-2008)
Paul Raymond (15 November 1925 – 2 March 2008), born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, was an English strip-club owner, publisher of pornography, and property developer who was dubbed the "King of Soho".
After opening the UK's first nightclub to stage live striptease, Raymond launched Paul Raymond Publications with the soft-porn magazine Men Only, soon followed by Escort, Club International, Mayfair and many other titles. He bought property on a large scale and by 1994 was the richest person in the UK.
He was starting to hand over control of his business to his daughter Debbie when she died of a heroin overdose in 1992, after which he became a recluse.
Early life
Raymond was born in Liverpool to Frank Joseph (who later changed his surname to Quinn), and Maud McKeown, one of three sons of an Irish Roman Catholic family. The family was abandoned by the father (a lorry driver for a haulage contractor) when Raymond was five with the result that he was brought up by his mother, who refused to allow the News of the World in the family home. Raymond attended St Francis Xavier's College located in Liverpool. The outbreak of World War II prompted relocation to Glossop, Derbyshire, where he was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers.
Leaving school at 15, he was a Manchester Ship Canal office boy before taking up the drums with dance bands. He was conscripted as a Bevin Boy down a coal mine, but gave up after a day and was found by police; he then did his National Service in the Royal Air Force, while working as a switchboard operator and bandsman. A self-confessed spiv, he sold nylons and petrol coupons on the black market.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2005020. VIAF identifies the subject as 152860042. The Library of Congress control number is no2010141693. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2008, 1994 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Raymond (publisher)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.