His friend Ian McEwan argues that Raine espouses "very strong and clear, almost Arnoldian, ideas of literature and criticism".
Among those who have lived and worked in the local area are the author of Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien, also Iris Murdoch, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Philip Pullman, Crime writers PD James and Colin Dexter (author of the Inspector Morse series), the poet Philip Larkin, and more recently novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan (Atonement).
Ian Fleming | Ian McKellen | Ian Smith | Ian Rankin | Ian Brown | Ian Botham | Ian Thorpe | Ian McEwan | Ian Paisley | Ian Kershaw | Ian Bremmer | Ian Roberts | Ian Ogilvy | Ian McShane | Ian MacKaye | Ian Holm | Ian Carmichael | Ian Richardson | Ian La Frenais | Ian Gillan | Ian Dury | Ian Bannen | Janis Ian | Ian Roberts (actor) | Ian McNeice | Ian Edginton | Ian Anderson | Ian Pooley | Ian Page | Ian O'Brien |
His translations, some forty books in total, range from mystery writing to philosophy, sociology, and poetry, including work by Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, George Orwell, Stephen King, Ian McEwan, Josef Skvorecky, Walter Benjamin, John Keats, John Ashbery, Mickey Spillane and Charles Bernstein.
He also produced several television films for the Film on Four strand, including Last Day of Summer, written by Ian McEwan from his own short story, and The House, the debut drama from writer-director and People Show alumnus Mike Figgis.
The most prominent series is called "The Red Book", which features authors like Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, Günter Grass, Ian McEwan, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, John Irving, Mikhail Bulgakov and many others, there are currently over 80 books in the series.
The Ploughman's Lunch is a 1983 film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre which features Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry and Rosemary Harris.
In his role as head of Jonathan Cape, he discovered and published many writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Ian McEwan and Bruce Chatwin, to whom he acted as an informal patron.
Vintage is now a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, publishing writers such as Philip Roth, Ian McEwan, Richard Yates, Willa Cather, Martin Amis and Toni Morrison.