Category Archives: Books

Turned out nice again

By tom | Published: 13/06/2013

The Southbank Centre invited me to create a language installation for the Festival of Neighbourhood. The site stretches from Waterloo Bridge to the London Eye, and incorporates the new Jubilee Gardens that front the old Shell complex. Language is a strong theme in this year’s summer festivities. They include the London Literary Festival, typo-graphics by [...]

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Apostrophegeddon

By tom | Published: 07/05/2013

Writing is not about rules, but communicating ideas. Any company that rejects a job application because of a misplaced apostrophe is barking up the wrong tree. The most original thinkers I work with struggle to tie their shoelaces.

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A Christmas Cracker

By 66000 | Published: 09/12/2012

Rochester House, home for The Story Museum, was a magnet for roving Tale Tellers, Yarn Spinners and Gossip Mongers who arrived from far and wide to feed off the Oxford Gyre; the storytelling energy that has made the city of dreaming spires such a Mecca for writers.

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Whale of a time

By tim | Published: 13/11/2012

Moby Dick: Big Read presents an online version of Melville’s book, with each chapter read aloud and accompanied by a painting, drawing or photograph.

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Noisy perfection

By tom | Published: 26/09/2012

I am sitting in the Bodleian Library with Dr Christopher Fletcher, a Fellow of Exeter College, member of the English Faculty and Keeper of Special Collections. On the table between us is a yellowing manuscript of translucent pages inscribed with a neat copperplate script in brown ink. It is the autograph draft manuscript of The [...]

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Comfortable among the clouds

By tim | Published: 24/01/2012

Joseph Roth’s What I Saw captures his impressions and observations as he wanders Berlin in the years between the two World Wars. He re-constructs the city before the reader’s eyes. But it’s very much his Berlin – one moment a hard reality of stone and traffic, the next a floating world of dizzying shapes and elusive symbols.

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Mad in America

By tim | Published: 25/11/2011

From Bedlam to chemical lobotomies; this is a harrowing history of the way people with mental illness have been treated in the US and other developed countries.

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WORDSTOCK – One Amazing Day

By tom | Published: 14/10/2011

WORDSTOCK began as a twinkle in our collective eyes at a 26 Board meeting: Could it be possible to attract 70 people who are mad about writing and communications to a wordstorming Saturday somewhere in central London? And if so, who so, where so, when so? Approaching likely punters was the easy bit because 26 [...]

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Calisthenics for the brain

By tim | Published: 05/07/2011

The writing process can help us to think through what we know and develop richer, more useful, more valuable, more considered interpretations of the world.

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Between the lines

By tim | Published: 31/05/2011

Despite the Cold War editorial shadow play, much of what Encounter published seems thoughtful, considered and independent, and certainly bears reading today.

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