FAME has come late – and in a faraway country – for pensioner Tony Clark.

The 76-year-old first published his book on bookbinding in 1988, when it ran to three editions before going out of print.

But then a publishing firm decided to produce his book in India – resulting in queues of people clamouring for copies stretching around the hall at a publishers’ fair in Delhi last month.

Mr Clark, from Milton-under-Wychwood, an acknowledged guru in the field of bookbinding, said: “Over the years I made notes of the problems faced by bookbinders.

“These turned into a book, Book Binding With Adhesives.

“It was first published by McGraw Hill and ran to three editions. Then 14 years ago it went out of print but the publishers gave me the copyright.”

The book has recently become a bookbinder’s bible in India, where a huge proportion of the world’s books, including many from Oxford University Press – which until the 1980s had a book bindery in Walton Street, Oxford – are now produced.

Some 2,000 copies were produced just for the publisher’s fair in India, which lasted a week.

Mr Clark added: “I had written a few articles for the Indian publisher Wellbound Worldwide and they asked if they could republish the book.

“I said yes, and the demand was overwhelming.”

But Mr Clark, a former president of the Institute of Bookbinding, will not become rich as a result.

He said: “I felt it was too far gone to demand money.

“So I just told them: ‘Give me some books and I’ll be happy’.

“Mainly they have been either given to customers of Wellbound or sold to experts and professionals in India.”

Some 9,000 copies of his book were produced in Britain across the nine years it was in publication.

Mr Clark still receives income from his patented machine, the Page-Pull Tester, which he invented back in 1999 for testing the strength of book bindings.

He said: “Paperbacks in particular used to suffer from pages falling out.

“This machine enables you to see the strength of a binding and is used, among many, by Argos who produce about 15 million catalogues a year and insist on good strength.”