Howard M. Nixon was a librarian, bibliographer, and bookbinding historian. He spent the greater part of his career at the British Museum Library, which was combined in 1973 with the National Central Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology, and the British National Bibliography to become the British Library. He was an inspiring and enthusiastic teacher of historical bibliography and lectured and wrote widely and profusely on the subject he made especially his own: the history of English and European bookbinding.

Howard Millar Nixon was born in Dean's Yard, Westminster Abbey, London, on 3 September 1909, the second of three children of the Reverend Leigh Hunter Nixon, a minor canon and precentor at the abbey, and Harrie Millar Nixon. He grew up within the precincts of the abbey. His formal education took him from Miss Choisy's School in Ebury Street, London, to Hazelwood in Surrey, from there with a...