In early 2014, after many years living abroad, Sam Miller returned to his childhood home in London. His father was dying.

When the editor, writer, critic and academic Karl Miller died later that year, the obituaries spoke of his brilliance and influence, of how he founded the London Review of Books, and how he had shaped the careers of some of the finest writers and poets of the second half of the twentieth century. But they gave little sense of Karl Miller beyond the world of work: the warm, funny, football-loving family man so adored by his children and grandchildren.

In...