A very sad message landed on Sunday’s doorstep. “The Nobel prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez is suffering from senile dementia and can no longer write, his brother has revealed.”

Age takes us all and the Columbian writer is 85. Yet it seems a particularly cruel irony that a mind should fade that once created the magic of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. A stunning talent that emanates from a country more often in the news for the havoc caused by crops of mind-altering drugs. If only the appetite for literature were as rapacious to western tastes.

But perhaps that bitter observation is too harsh. Márquez is widely read and has received many plaudits including a Nobel prize in 1982. His writing is rich with the spicy marinade of his homeland that so often only an exile can concoct. He worked mostly in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Mexico. I regret that I never met him. But his work was a key part of  the Picador stable so I had the pleasure of applying design to his work. The cover of his best known work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was designed by David Larkin. Subsequent cover designs under my art direction were aimed at simplicity and character. An attempt to create a sense of expectation. A title such as Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which opens with an anonymous note slid under a door is magic, is a gift. The trick is to recognise it. The illustration by Gary McCarver brings the image to vivid life. Graphic elaboration or over-worked visuals would add little to this potent combination.

So, sadly I cannot tell you of our meeting, of his traits or personality. No jokes, no first-hand insights. Just a recommendation that you read his glorious work. I feel moved to mention that I have friends and acquaintances who are dealing with senility in parents. The tragedy of seeing a mind slip away, perhaps not recognising their own children, whilst physically still present and active. So hard. I find myself hoping that if the mind is in ‘another place’ that it may be a place of contentment not torment. Great art is one of the lasting legacies available to a precious few. One is Gabriel García Márquez. I hope he is in a place as good as he put my mind as a reader.