Simon Garfield

Comic Sans is one of the most used and most reviled typefaces of the digital age. How was it made? How could it spawn a movement to ban it and yet still be so widely promoted by educators? What does its accidental creator make of its contentious and singular history?

This quirky and unique book considers how the computer transformed type into something that anyone could use and have an opinion on. It examines how a typeface, correctly used, may sell us almost anything, and how new types with names such as Crash Soul, Lovely Scream Queens and Ampersandist (to name but three recent examples of the hundreds issued each year) each attempt to keep the alphabet exciting and new. And it concludes with an alluring question: could Comic Sans now be the coolest typeface ever made?

The classic elegant English typeface, still widely used as a book text more than 250 years since its creation. Baskerville is a transitional design, poised between the first metal types and modern styles, notable for its combination of fat and thin strokes. When it was first used there was genuine concern that it would damage readers’ eyes.

John Baskerville was a maverick lacquer maker and printer in Birmingham, a flamboyant dresser, an important figure in the Enlightenment. Though it earned him little money, he was obsessive about both his typeface and its appearance on the page, a perfectionism culminating in his magnificent Bible. The story encompasses one of the first powerful women of the printing world, his wife Sarah Baskerville, and the many typefaces the Baskervilles inspired. And it examines why John Baskerville’s body was dug up and buried many times before it was finally allowed to rest in peace.

One of the most beautiful handcrafted typefaces in the world, Albertus is also one of the most enduring.

The face of thousands of book jackets, and the chosen look for David Bowie, Coldplay, Star Wars and London street signs, Albertus is as as warmly enticing on film posters as it is on memorial plaques.

The story of the font is one displacement (its designer Berthold Wolpe was a German Jewish refugee who went on to design the masthead for The Times), but also one of permanence, for it has proved a fresh, vibrant and indestructible face for almost a century. In this unique celebration, the designer’s children reveal the history of its creation and the erratic brilliance of their father, while the book grapples with one of the fundamental artistic questions: what makes great art not only survive but flourish in each new age and medium?

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world.

Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, adults cleared their shelves in the belief that wisdom was now effortlessly accessible in their living rooms. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi helped millions of children with their homework.

But now these huge books gather dust and sell for almost nothing on eBay, and we derive our information from the internet, apparently for free. What have we lost in this transition? And how did we tell the progress of our lives in the past?

All the Knowledge in the World is a history and celebration of those who created the most ground-breaking and remarkable publishing phenomenon of any age. It tracks the story from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print. It looks at how Encyclopaedia Britannica came to dominate the industry and how an army of ingenious door-to-door salesmen sold their wares to guilt-ridden parents. It explains how encyclopaedias have reflected our changing attitudes towards sexuality, race and technology, and exposes how these ultimate bastions of trust were often riddled with errors and prejudice.

With his characteristic ability to tackle the broadest of subjects in an illuminating and highly entertaining way, Simon Garfield uncovers a fascinating and important part of our past, and wonders whether the promise of complete knowledge – that most human of ambitions – will forever be beyond our grasp.

One of the first words we learn. Perhaps the best friend we’ll have. An animal so much part of our lives that we speak to it like a child and spend small fortunes on its wellbeing and wardrobe.

Dogs and humans: in the last 200 years no inter-species relationship has developed so fast nor come so far. Dogs accompany us in every walk of life, usually three times a day. How and why did this relationship begin? How has it changed over the centuries? And who’s getting the upper hand?

Dog’s Best Friend investigates this unique bond by revisiting some of the most important milestones in our shared journey. It begins with the earliest visual evidence on ancient rock art, and ends at the laboratory that sequenced the first dog genome. En route we encounter the first Labradoodle in Australia, a misguidedly loyal Akita in Japan, an ill-fated Poodle trainer in the United States, and a hilariously disobedient Romanian rescue dog named Kratu at the Birmingham NEC. We will also meet Corgis and Dorgis at the Palace, the weightless mutniks of the Soviet space programme, a Dalmatian who impersonates Hitler, and an owner who claims his Border Collie can remember the names of more than a thousand soft toys.

If you own or once owned a dog, you will know that our relationship can be as rich, complicated and rewarding as the relationship we have with other humans, and the book reflects this diversity with the aid of trainers, breeders and psychologists. Above all, it explores the extraordinary ability of dogs to enhance so many aspects of our lives. Dog’s Best Friend is as entertaining as it is informative, as eccentric as it is erudite, and all told with Simon Garfield’s irrepressible gift for witty and insightful storytelling.

In Miniature is a delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.

Here you will find the secret histories of tiny Eiffel Towers, the truth about the flea circus, a doll’s house made for a queen, eerie tableaux of crime scenes, miniature food, model villages and railways, and more. Simon Garfield brings together history, psychology, art and obsession, to explore what fuels the strong appeal of miniature objects among collectors, modellers and fans, and teaches us that there is greatness in the diminutive.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

The Beatles learn to be brilliant in an hour and a half. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A US Senator begins a speech that will last for 25 hours.

The horrors of war are frozen at the click of a camera.

A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister lives out the same four minutes over a lifetime. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks.

Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalise it and make it meaningful. It has two simple intentions: to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts.

‘Extraordinary. Timeless, funny and utterly absorbing’ HILARY MANTEL In April 1925, Jean Lucey Pratt started a journal that she would keep for the rest of her life, producing over a million words in 45 exercise books. For sixty years, no one had an inkling of her diaries’ existence, and they have remained unpublished until now. Jean wrote about anything that amused, inspired or troubled her, laying bare her life with aching honesty, infectious humour, indelicate gossip and heartrending hopefulness. She recorded her yearnings and disappointments in love. She documented the loss of a tennis match, her unpredictable driving, catty friends, devoted cats and difficult guests. With Jean we live through the tumult of the Second World War and the fears of a nation. We see Britain hurtling through a period of unbridled transformation and the shifting landscape for women in society. A unique slice of living, breathing British history, Jean’s diaries are a revealing chronicle of life in the twentieth century.

This is a signed edition. To the Letter tells the story of our remarkable journey through the mail. From Roman wood chips discovered near Hadrian’s Wall to the wonders and terrors of email, Simon Garfield explores how we have written to each other over the centuries and what our letters reveal about our lives. Along the way he delves into the great correspondences of our time, from Cicero and Petrarch to Jane Austen and Ted Hughes (and John Keats, Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, Anais Nin and Charles Schulz), and traces the very particular advice offered by bestselling letter-writing manuals. He uncovers a host of engaging stories, including the tricky history of the opening greeting, the ideal ingredients for invisible ink, and the sad saga of the dead letter office. As the book unfolds, so does the story of a moving wartime correspondence that shows how letters can change the course of life. To the Letter is a wonderful celebration of letters in every form, and a passionate rallying cry to keep writing.

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history.

With a historical sweep ranging from Ptolemy to Twitter, Garfield explores the legendary, impassable (and non-existent) mountains of Kong, the role of cartography in combatting cholera, the 17th-century Dutch craze for Atlases, the Norse discovery of America, how a Venetian monk mapped the world from his cell and the Muppets’ knack of instant map-travel. Along the way are pocket maps of dragons, Mars, murders and more, with plenty of illustrations and prints to signpost the route.

From the bestselling and widely-adored author of Just My Type, On The Map is a witty and irrepressible examination of where we’ve been, how we got there and where we’re going.

Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers … and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about.

As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is ‘a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.’

This edition is available with both black and silver covers.

Bob Carlos Clarke, one of the most controversial photographers of his generation, had a reputation for brilliant, sexually-infused shots. He had entertained Princess Diana at his studio and was a mainstay of Chelsea parties for twenty years. He photographed major rock stars and models, and he was universally recognised as an unrivalled photographic printer. Students of photography packed his lectures and queued for hours for his autograph, and many experts believe him to be the among the greatest unsung artistic talents of his times. But Carlos Clarke was also his own worst enemy, a unruly genius beset by self-doubt and prone to bad decisions. When he killed himself in 2006, at the age of 55, many people saw it as an inevitable ending to an inspired but troubled career. Simon Garfield stumbled on this world of photography, rock music, moneyed society and erotica while working on another project, and soon it enveloped him. The more people he spoke to, the greater his curiosity grew. Who was this unpredictable man? Was he really the ‘dark genius’ those in the know saw him as? And, most importantly – what, or who, killed Bob Carlos Clarke? Passionate and compelling, Exposure is a story of love, art, sex and corrosive despair. Above all, it is a unique window into the soul of a man burdened with obsession.

How do you make an object that changes the way people think about travel, a small metal box that inspires huge devotion in those who own it, a car that continues to make headlines fifty years after its launch? In May 1959, the first Mini was produced on an assembly line at Cowley, near Oxford. It would take a team of supremely talented designers, draftsmen, engineers and production-line workers to build a car that was unique in appearance and construction. They would clash frequently over an uncomfortable and unsafe prototype, and the public had to be convinced to buy a car that let in two inches of water when it rained. But somehow the Mini became an icon. Originally designed for austerity and efficiency, the car soon came to represent individuality and classlessness. Today, the car is still produced at Cowley – it is now owned by BMW and called the Mini. A great British manufacturing story, it is more popular throughout the world than it has ever been, a symbol of the age that created it. But who makes these things, and what do they think about their work? By meeting the people behind the Mini, Simon Garfield uncovers a fascinating story of British endeavour, ingenuity and masterful marketing. The modern Mini has come a long way from the leaky floor and sliding windows. But throughout its history, the people behind it have always known that they have been making something rare – a car with soul.

When he was very young, Simon Garfield lusted after rare stamps but could not afford them. When he was older, the passion reignited with almost ruinous results. The Error World is an examination of obsession and desire, and the search for fulfilment. But it is also a story of wooden legs, pornography in the Finchley Road, Pelé’s World Cup shirt, the man who guards stamps for the Queen, and a woman who is terrified of the Post Office Tower.

In Private Battles, award-winning writer Simon Garfield has skilfully interwoven the diaries of four ordinary people as they struggle to cope with the day-to-day reality of life during the Second World War. Their voices combine to create one of the most compelling and refreshing takes on the period ever published.

Meet Maggie Joy Blunt, a perceptive but frustrated young writer living alone near Slough. Pam Ashford, a shipping clerk in Glasgow who writes of office life as if it were an episode of The Archers. Edward Stebbing, a 20-year-old discharged soldier living with a stern landlady in Essex. And Ernest Van Someren, a research chemist in Hertfordshire, father of two children and proposer of several unique scientific ways to beat the Nazis.

Perhaps here, for the first time, is the true story of how the ordinary people of Britain won the Second World War. And of how we almost didn’t.

Of all the accounts written about the Second World War, none are more compelling than the personal diaries of those who lived through it. We Are At War is the story of five everyday folk, who, living on the brink of chaos, recorded privately on paper their most intimate hopes and fears.

Pam Ashford, a woman who keeps her head when all around are losing theirs, writes with comic genius about life in her Glasgow shipping office. Christopher Tomlin, a writing-paper salesman for whom business is booming, longs to be called up like his brother. Eileen Potter organises evacuations for flea-ridden children, while mother-of-three Tilly Rice is frustrated to be sent to Cornwall. And Maggie Joy Blunt tries day-by-day to keep a semblance of her ordinary life.

Entering their world as they lived it, each diary entry is poignantly engrossing. Amid the tumultuous start to the war, these ordinary British people are by turns apprehensive and despairing, spirited and cheerful – and always fascinatingly, vividly real.

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge, and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive – and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where remarkably most remain unread. In Our Hidden Lives, Simon Garfield has skilfully woven a tapestry of diary entries in the rarely discussed but pivotal period of 1945 to 1948. The result is a moving, intriguing, funny, at times heartbreaking book – unashamedly populist in the spirit of Forgotten Voices or indeed Margaret Forster’s Diary of an Ordinary Woman.

‘I love these diaries. They have the attraction of being stories, but REAL stories – Better than any novel.’ Margaret Forster

‘A lovely book. It will appeal to anyone who appreciates the richness and diversity of human experience.’ Tony Benn

‘Utterly engrossing, better than any kind of reality TV.’ Gavin Esler

‘Funny, vivid, touching, angry, thoughtful – every page is a delight. This is definitely no. 1 on my present list to give to everyone in the coming year.’ Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the greatest engineering feat of its age. George and Robert Stevenson’s “Rocket” was to become the most famous locomotive in history. William Huskisson was one of the greatest statesmen of his generation and certainly the most accident prone. On 15th September 1830, the three met for the first time. Huskisson’s fateful accident, in which the “Rocket” crushed his leg and thigh, is an unforgettable image of the Industrial Revolution. But what really happened on that day? How did the opening of the world’s first passenger railyway turn from a glorious morning into a tragic afternoon? This book is an entertaining tale of ambition, genius, rivalry and legend, plotting the eight-year struggle to build a railway with a cast of engineers, politicians, actresses, surgeons, socialites and breathtaking machines. It is a loud and evocative snapshot of the times, but above all it is a human story of one man’s shocking and very gory demise.

1856. Eighteen-year-old chemistry student William Perkin’s experiment has gone horribly wrong. But the deep brown sludge his botched project has produced has an unexpected power: the power to dye everything it touches a brilliant purple. Perkin has discovered mauve, the world’s first synthetic dye, bridging a gap between pure chemistry and industry which will change the world forever.

From the fetching ribbons tying back the hair of every fashionable head in London to the laboratories in which scientists developed modern vaccines against cancer and malaria, Simon Garfield tells the story of how the colour purple became a sensation.

In 1993, BBC Radio One gained a new controller. Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn’t go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio One’s commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners. What was to be done?

In the middle of this crisis, Radio One bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a touching, exciting and often hilarious portrait of a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.

The classic account of the men and women who used to fight each other for pride and money. Simon Garfield brings them to life in one last glorious bout of jealousy, myth, revenge, passion and deep devotion.

When British wrestling was dropped from the ITV schedules in the mid-80s it left the giants of the ring – Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki – bereft. This is the true story of the circuit, the big names and their rivalries, told with humour, warmth and affection. This edition features a new afterword by the author.

Published to coincide with World AIDS Day, this book looks at a decade of AIDS in Britain. As well as the 8000 who have died, some 20,000 are infected with HIV, and many more carry the virus unknowingly. With no cure or even a vaccine in sight, and growing evidence of complacency, AIDS is still one of the greatest post-war challenges the UK faces. This book covers every significant development of the disease, from the early ignorance and panic to the emergence of AIDS as a good cause taken up by Sir Ian McKellen, George Michael and the Princess of Wales. The author uses information supplied by doctors, scientists, government ministers and civil servants, as well as interviews with leading entertainment figures such as Stephen Fry, Elton John and the late Derek Jarman.