30 Years Ago

 

 

On 23 October 1996 Jan and her parents joined me at the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Beneath the ceiling painted by Rubens stood a platform of enormous volumes of The Dictionary of Art (TDA). This was a big day for me and my colleagues, especially Jane Turner, the Editor who around 1985 had joined the small embryonic staff of TDA as a specialist editor for Netherlandish art, and had masterminded the project with great skill and determination since her appointment as the Editor of TDA in 1987.

 

My own involvement in the project had begun at a dinner in New York in November 1980. Now and then I had been asked for advice, notably market research (carried out in the USA by my friend and former reference publisher of St. Martin’s Press, Roland Turner). In 1985, Nicky Byam Shaw, the Chairman of Macmillan, had asked me if I would be the Publisher of TDA, responsible for all aspects of the project, including spending a great deal of money. He told me that the job might not fully occupy my time but that TDA was such an important project that, if I was not busy, I could play golf. As it turned out I never had the time for golf.

 

Some of those giant volumes travelled to launch events in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, but not to the US launch in the American galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, nor to the International House in Roppongi, Tokyo (followed by a late-night party in a jazz club), or to the British Ambassador’s residence in Seoul.

 

Thirty years later, Jane and I have written an article for Oxford University Press, current owners of TDA, which with permission I have copied below. But first some photos.

 

Checking page proofs at R. R. Donnelly & Son, Willard, Ohio, Spring 1996: left to right a more youthful Ian Jacobs, Jane Turner, John Peacock, Production Director, Steve Benaim, Production Manager.

 

Julian Bell, The Dictionary of Art, oil on paper, 67x39 inches, 1992. Based on photos of colleagues at work, Julian's painting depicts the offices of TDA at 112 Strand, London. In the full size work (not visible alas in this scan) I can be seen "With his hands in his pockets as usual," as my boss said.

 

 

The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, 23 October 1996

International House, Tokyo, November 1996. Left to right, front row, Professor Terukazu Akiyama, Japanese adviser to TDA, Naoko Matsumoto, marketing manager, Dr. Larissa Haskell and Professor Francis Haskell, Oxford University, Ian Jacobs, and Joan Mondale, wife of Ambassador Walter Mondale. Mrs. Mondale had a special interest in Japanese art.  

Dr. Youngsook Pak (second left) of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Londonn, British ambassador Thomas Harris, and mIan Jacobsat the launch of TDA, the ambassador's residence in Seoul, 19 November 1996.

The following is the article that Jane and I authored jointly.

 

 

Contributors: Ian Jacobs and Jane Turner

 

Grove Dictionary of Art, The

 

1.   Initial planning.

 

When Harold Macmillan’s family publishing company launched The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in New York in 1980, he asked the firm’s then chairman, Nicholas Byam Shaw, grandson of the painter John Byam Shaw, to consider a dictionary of art. Richard Garnett, editorial director of The New Grove, also heir to an artistic pedigree (his father was a member of the Bloomsbury Group), was asked to produce an outline plan.

 

Garnett studied the three existing substantial art reference works, the Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (see Thieme–Becker), the Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs (commonly known as Bénézit), and the Encyclopedia of World Art. The first two consisted only of artist biographies, and the third, liberally illustrated survey articles. Garnett’s plan for The Dictionary of Art envisaged a work of worldwide coverage roughly half as large again as The New Grove that would combine biographies with articles on topics such as forms, styles, and movements, as well as civilizations and cultures omitted from, or insufficiently treated in, standard reference works. Like The New Grove, this dictionary would feature scholarship of the highest caliber while being readable and allowing for opinions and interpretations, not only dry facts.

 

This plan gradually changed. Architecture and the decorative arts, initially allocated only cursory treatment, were ultimately well represented, covered in entries on every UN-recognized country as well as under specific cities and centers of production. The recognition of cultures outside the West was unprecedented, from Africa to Aboriginal Australia and from the Pacific Arts to the Caribbean. This endeavor would take many years, a large investment (eventually £34 million), and would require a team of specialists in many areas.

 

On its publication in 1996, the dictionary consisted of 34 volumes (the 34th being an index), with 45,000 entries in alphabetical order, comprising some 26 million words of text written by 6802 scholars from more than 120 countries, accompanied by 15,000 black-and-white illustrations and 300 color plates. Nearly a quarter of the articles were translated from thirty different languages. The tasks of commissioning and processing such vast content were therefore substantial and complex, especially considering that most of the editorial and production work was carried out before the internet and email became generally available. Communication was conducted by fax, letter, and telephone or by hand when authors visited Britain.

Fig. oao-9781884446054-e-8000025119-graphic-1.jpg The stage for the launch of The Grove Dictionary of Art in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, October 23, 1996; image credit: Macmillan Publishers International Ltd.

 

2.   Editorial appointments and detailed planning.

 

By 1983 Macmillan Publishers had approved the plan, and Garnett had appointed as editor Hugh Brigstocke, who was succeeded in 1987 by Jane Turner; in 1985 Ian Jacobs was appointed as publisher of the project. Brigstocke assembled an international advisory board of twelve senior scholars, along with a growing number of outside area advisers whose role was to suggest topics for inclusion, their relative word lengths, and potential authors. By this time an initial team of scholars was appointed as in-house area editors, responsible for all aspects of the planning of their area of expertise, such as Classical Greece and Rome, medieval European architecture, Italian Renaissance art, Africa, the Pre-Columbian Americas, or Islamic art. Given the subject range, writers were commissioned from many disciplines: art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, curators, specialists who worked for art dealers and auction houses, and independent scholars. Eventually, the in-house editorial team consisted of some 100 editors who prepared articles for publication, relying on a 450-page editorial manual known as the “bible” to ensure consistency.

 

For general articles on materials and techniques, art forms, building types, patronage, collecting, and dealing, editors worked together to coordinate coverage globally and across time. For example, the article “Door” included discussions of this form from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, Early Christian and medieval Europe, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, and the Western world after 1750, as well as in the Islamic world, the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Pre-Columbian Americas. Lorenzo Ghiberti’s famous Baptistery doors in Florence were discussed here, their planning in detail in the biography of Ghiberti, their creation in the broader context of the history of the building and of its patronage, and the remarkable feat of their casting was addressed from a technical perspective in an article on “Bronze.” Such interrelated coverage was facilitated by the index and extensive cross-references.

In a period of rapid changes in their disciplines, editors embraced evolving scholarly approaches. For example, some scholars of South Asian art adopted traditional dynastic labels, while others divided art into religious categories: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and so on. The editor for South Asian art worked with advisers to devise a system of geographical and temporal categories that could be applied flexibly. Similarly, Islamic art was defined not as the art of a religion but art produced in places where Islam was the principal or most important religion, and again was structured by geographical and chronological categories. The territorial size of Islamic art involved terminology in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish (distinct from modern Turkish), Russian, Spanish, French, and “Orientalist” transcription systems. A simplified system based on Arabic script was adopted. Similarly, editors did not shrink from controversies. As critic Robert Hughes noted in his 1996 review in Time magazine: “It will not … make Greek nationalists happy to find … the view that the ancient Helladic culture was not created by Greek indigenous peoples but by a people who emigrated from what is now Turkey.”

 

Editors had to keep abreast of news and geopolitical events. Work on the dictionary began when the Soviet Union and European Communist states were essentially closed to the West. Communication with scholars in those areas was controlled by the state, which posed challenges. The publisher, for instance, resisted Russian requests to “correct” articles on Russian art written by non-Soviet scholars. Access to scholars became easier in 1985 (thanks to Glasnost) and even more relaxed as Communist regimes collapsed in 1989. This led to additional work and the incorporation of new topics and discoveries, especially from Central Asia where Soviet scholars had made significant finds. Entries distorted by loyalty to the former regimes were replaced, and many references to East Germany, East Berlin, and Yugoslavia were amended. Scholars facing social and political unrest in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan resorted to faxes and diplomatic pouches to send information documenting endangered or destroyed national monuments.

 

Picture research and indexing proceeded alongside editing. When commissioned, contributors were asked to suggest illustrations. Editors checked their proposals to avoid duplication, and a team of picture researchers acquired the images. Besides commercial images, maps, archaeological site plans, and specially drawn diagrams were commissioned. The Index ultimately consisted of some 750,000 references.

 

3.   Other functions and technology.

 

By the 1990s some 120 people worked in the offices of the dictionary at 112 Strand in central London. Supplementing the editorial team were indexers, picture editors, translators, administrators, and production staff.

 

Bespoke computer systems were commissioned for indexing and administration (the latter from the London Business School). Such was the scale and complexity of the typesetting, indexing, and digital coding that only five suppliers worldwide were capable of supporting the production of the dictionary; Pindar Ltd. in Scarborough, Yorkshire, was selected. Although initial publication as a multi-volume book set was planned, by c. 1986 it was decided to use a form of SGML (standard generalized markup language) to simplify the management of typography and other elements and to facilitate future digital publication. The makeup and correction of many thousands of pages in a few months was managed by William Clowes Ltd. of Beccles, Suffolk; the volumes were printed in Willard, OH, by R.R. Donnelley & Sons.

 

4.   Reception and reviews.

 

In1996 The Grove Dictionary of Art was named Apollo Book of the Year and also received the 1996 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award (“demonstrating excellence in art publishing”) from ARLIS, NA. In 1997 the American Library Association awarded the dictionary the Dartmouth Medal, which recognizes a reference work of outstanding quality and significance. The same year the H. W. Wilson Award of the American Society for Indexing was given to the dictionary’s indexers, Ruth Levitt and Gillian Northcott, who the previous year had been awarded the 1996 Wheatley Medal of the Society of Indexers in the UK. In 1998 Jane Turner received a special Charles Rufus Morey Award from the American College Art Association.

 

Reviews were unanimously positive, recognizing the unrivaled range and the colossal amount of labor and organization that went into the ambitious enterprise. Richard Brilliant of Columbia University, for example, highlighted the inclusion of “African art, world architecture, Asian art, the decorative arts, Islamic art, Buddhist art, 20th-century art, photography, and many other … topics only recently recognized as worthy of attention.” Admittedly, however, not all general topics, such as “Portraiture,” were covered as globally as editors would have liked.

The Burlington Magazine observed that the dictionary had taken patronage seriously but lacked an overarching entry on the practice of patronage. A review in Art Documentation welcomed the heightened prominence of the decorative arts, especially those beyond the Western traditions, but felt that biographies of makers were too few compared to painters, sculptors, and architects. The coverage of American art was, the review judged, far superior to that in existing surveys and reference works, and the inclusion of art from many traditions enabled readers to explore comparative art history globally.

 

Thearticles were commended for incorporating up-to-date research, including new archaeological discoveries. Concerning architecture, its inclusion within broader art history

was especially valuable. Also praised was the jargon-free, “clear and readable” prose of the entries, which as Robert Hughes remarked, were “sometimes even dryly witty.” The sense of humor was perhaps best exemplified by the spine of vol. 19, covering “Leather to Macho.”

 

5. Grove Art Online.

 

The absence of a CD-ROM edition, regretted by some reviewers upon publication, was addressed in 1998 when the publisher opted to convert the dictionary into an online resource under the supervision of deputy editor Diane Fortenberry. Taking advantage of the SGML mark-up introduced during typesetting, Semantico, based in Brighton, Sussex, and founded by the programmer who maintained the dictionary’s index system, originally created by Roger Charlesworth, converted the typesetting files to an online, searchable database. The index was repurposed as a “related article” function to direct users quickly to relevant material elsewhere in the database.                                                                   

 

Thelack of online permissions for all illustrations except for maps and line drawings was solved in two ways. Links to images available on museum websites were embedded in articles, but this was limited by availability. A more comprehensive solution was provided by an arrangement with the Bridgeman Art Library to search its image database. The online publication has since enabled editors to update content rather than adding new material by way of spinoff books or new editions every ten or twenty years. In 2003 The Dictionary of Art and Grove Art Online were acquired by Oxford University Press, which five years later relaunched the online portal as Oxford Art Online.

 

Bibliography.

 

Gardner, Wendy. “The Dictionary of Art: The Concept, the Challenges, and the Achievements.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 15, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 29–32.

Stahl, Joan. “The Grove Dictionary of Art Online.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 18, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 51–52.

“The Alphabetical Ordering of World Art.” The Burlington Magazine 138, no. 1123 (Oct 1996): 643.

Hughes, Robert. “Towering Venture: Grove’s New 34-volume Dictionary of Art is an Epic Publishing Event.” Time 148, no. 21 (Nov 4, 1996): 93–94.

Brilliant, Richard. “A Vast Compendium of Knowledge.” Art Journal 56, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 82–85.

Cole, Herbert M. “Africa in The Dictionary of Art.” African Arts 30, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 58–65, 85–88.

Doumato, Lamia and others. “Dictionary of Art 34 vol. by Jane Turner.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 16, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 23-27.

“Like a cigarette butt”

  

On 23 February 1981 Carmen Diez de Pereira spent much time making phone calls. The first was to the Captain General of Valencia, asking for a car to take her to speak to her husband. She explained that she had been trying to arrange for her husband to call her without success. Spain’s Director General of Security had suggested recording her voice so that it could be broadcast to her husband by megaphone. But, she explained, “I know Antonio and Antonio thinks that they have forced me [to speak].”

 

She also spoke to her friend Herminia, who told her that she should be proud, but Carmen’s judgement of her husband was harsh: “he’s a wretched failure [desgraciao]” who had been deceived. Carmen said much the same thing to another friend, and added that Antonio had “so much love of the patria, he gave it so much, see how they have taken him in.” Carmen phoned her son Antonio, a student in the Military Academy of Zaragoza: “Bien hijo mío, ya te puedes imaginar han dejao a tu padre tirao como una colilla” [Well son, what do you think, they have thrown your father away like a cigarette butt.] “What happened?”, Antonio Jr asked. “Pues que el ejército se ha rajao.” {Well, the army has lost its nerve].

 

The unhappy man who was Carmen’s husband and father of their six children, died on 25 February 2026 (Carmen had died in 2022). His death was front page news in El País, for Antonio was Antonio Tejero, the Civil Guard colonel who 45 years ago had led his troops into the Spanish Cortes and had held the entire Spanish government captive. By coincidence, Antonio died on the very day that the documentation relating to his attempted coup was declassified, including recordings of Carmen’s anguished phone calls.

Tejero in the Cortes 23 February 1981

 

The extensive reports in El País make it clear that these were perilous times for the young Spanish democracy, presided over by King Juan Carlos I. A government report written after Tejero’s failed coup identified three significant plots: Tejero’s conspiracy, which involved a number of low-level officers as protagonists, another military-only group of more senior officers, and a military-civilian scheme. None of this could have surprised the authorities. Tejero had been disciplined several times for actions and published views that contravened military discipline. Six lower-level officers of the Centro Superior de Información para la Defensa (CID, the Spanish secret service) were involved in Tejero’s affair. And the Ministry of Defense was aware that the military had begun to regard the King as an enemy.

 

The King himself had proposed a plan to avoid a military coup, involving a coalition government led by a soldier. Juan Carlos had allowed General Alfonso Armada to promote himself as a possible leader of such a government. Armada was a key element of Tejero’s plan. The idea was to seize the government, then Lieutenant General Jaime Milans del Bosch would mobilize his troops in Valencia, Armada would visit the King to persuade him to back the coup. The first two parts succeeded: Tejero had captured the entire government, Milans del Bosch had sent tanks on to the streets of Valencia, and troops had seized the studios of Televisión España (TVE).

 

But the problem was the King. When Armada requested an audience Juan Carlos said no. He told Milans del Bosch “I will not abdicate, nor will I leave Spain. Anybody who rebels is prepared to provoke a new civil war and will be responsible for it.” He sent a telex to the Captains General of the army stating that “I have ordered the civil authorities and the Chiefs of Staff to maintain the constitutional order.” The troops occupying TVE were persuaded to withdraw and the King recorded an address to the nation.

 

Tejero stood down, but the threat was by no means eliminated. Another coup was planned for 24 June, the King’s birthday, when the most senior military officers, diputados [members of congress] and senior government officials would all be gathered in the Royal Palace. This too failed (the presence of diplomatic corps stayed the conspirators’ hand). One military officer complained that the error of the conspirators “was to leave the Bourbon [the King] at liberty and to deal with him as if he were a gentleman.” Juan Carlos, the officer lamented, was ready “to proceed with his suicidal plan to include the socialists in the government.” Therefore, the military should eliminate the King.

 

Tejero was prosecuted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After his release, he lived in retirement devoting himself to painting and occasionally attending events such as the reinterment of Franco’s remains. He does not seem to have changed his views and at his funeral there a few cries of “Viva Tejero.”

 

Juan Carlos, in contrast, has been living in disgrace in Abu Dhabi after abdicating because of his involvement in a corruption scandal. We were in Spain in 2022 when he paid a brief private visit to Spain. The press coverage of his visit was unanimously hostile. The extensive coverage of the death of Tejero in February 2026 was accompanied by reports that Juan Carlos may return to live in Spain. The government and the royal household have indicated that his return would not be opposed. Perhaps the anniversary of the moment when he played a vital role in securing Spain’s democratic future will compensate for his disgrace.

History round every corner

  

Shortly before I retired the owner of Thames & Hudson, who profoundly disliked America, but who had employed me to develop a programme of textbooks for US college courses, asked me whether I really enjoyed my travels to many obscure towns where we could sell our textbooks. I replied that I had never been to a place where there was not a person or something that was not interesting.

 

I recalled this brief conversation because, at the urging of Kourtney, the partner of our eldest son, I have been drafting my memoirs and I have reached the thirteen years of my life working for Thames & Hudson. One of the visits I recalled was to Rome, Georgia (I used to joke that I had been to Paris (Texas), Athens (Georgia), Cambridge (Maryland), Birmingham (Alabama), and London (Ontario) without once setting foot in Europe). I paid a call at Berry College, founded in 1902 on 93 acres outside the town as a Boys Industrial School by Martha Berry, daughter of a grocery wholesaler and cotton trader. Rome’s location on the Etowah River made it a trading hub in north Georgia and southern Tennessee in the days of river transport. Theodore Roosevelt once visited Martha’s wood cabin schoolhouse, and Woodrow Wilson’s wife was a native of Rome. So there are presidential links to the town’s history.

 

While I was in Rome, I took a stroll downtown and discovered, outside the town hall, a statue of Romulus and Remus suckling from a female wolf (a copy of the Capitoline Wolf, a famous statue in Rome, Italy). A plaque on the statue announces: “Romae Novae, aspicium propseritatis et gloriae lupam capitolinam signum Roma aeterna, consule Benito Mussolini misit anno MCMXXIX” (In New Rome, the auspice of prosperity and glory, the Capitoline Wolf, the symbol of eternal Rome, was sent by the consul Benito Mussolini in 1929). It seems that the citizens of Rome are still proud of their link to Il Duce.

 

Well, earlier this month (February 2026) I took a friend who was Macmillan’s publishers of many thousands of academic books, and who was about to mark his 91^st birthday, to lunch in the Belgian Arms in Holyport, near Maidenhead. The pub is over 200 years old, and one of its upstairs rooms was once home to the local Methodist worshippers (incongruously, since Methodists are in principle tee-total). It was previously called The Eagle. During the First World War, some German prisoners were held in Holyport. For reasons unexplained, the Prussian arms were displayed on the front of the pub, and as the prisoners passed by, they saluted the arms. This so annoyed the locals that they renamed the pub (Belgium, of course, was where the main battlefields of the war were situated) the Belgian Arms.

 

Tim, however, had in mind another piece of local history: there are 23 real tennis courts in the UK, and one is in Holyport. So we tracked it won, (a short distance from the Belgian Arms). The game is ancient (Henry VIII played it at Hampton Court), but Holyport is a newcomer. The owner of Holyport House built the court in 1889. His successor was a cricket man, and the court was neglected, but was restored in the 1980s. 

 

Holyport Real Tennis Club

 

 

A Real Tennis court is a rare sight. There are only 41 courts worldwide. In addition to those in the UK there are ten in the USA, almost all in the East. The Racquet Club of Chicago, at Dearborn and West Schiller is the furthest west. Its closest neighbour is the Racquet Club of Philadelphia France and Australia each have four clubs.

 

Our visit prompted me to investigate the derivation of Holyport’s name. The town is named after no holy site or event; its derivation is the Old English horig (muddy) and port (market-town).

Reading: how to start

  

After I received some responses to my blog about books that inspired people to read, I decided to ask my family the same question. The answers from family and friends were many and varied. I hope that they will interest you as much as they have me.

 

My eldest brother responded: “I can't remember any books that I read as a child. The only books I remember at home was the set of encyclopedias that we used as a table tennis net. When we lived at Swinburne Road [our first family home], I was friendly with Michael Peachey and his family owned the newsagents in Meredith Road and I could read the comics before they were delivered!”

 

My youngest brother and I recall a comic that we read regularly, The Victor, a creature of its time that reflected British class and national attitudes. There was The Tough of the Track (working class), Gorgeous Gus (an aristocrat), “not forgetting of course the comic's educational value in teaching German: Donner und Blitzen, Hande hoch and the rest.” German’, of course, were sinister figures. My brother still has several Victor Annuals. The book which most inspired him was The Little Grey Men by BB (1942), a tale of “the adventures of the last gnomes in England, it is a beautiful evocation of the English countryside. I read it again a few years ago, and still enjoyed it.”

 

Neither of my brothers mentioned books from the public library, although I remember quite clearly borrowing from Ipswich’s central library, particularly the section of biographies of historical figures for children.

 

My sister’s account of her youthful reading was particularly detailed and brought back memories of our childhood in Ipswich. The first children’s book she remembers is Enid Blyton’s Noddy. She recalls most vividly that, because the bus fare to the public library in central Ipswich was expensive, most of her reading came from the commercial lending library at the newsagent and sweet shop of Mr & Mrs Boreham; this was a shelf of books at the counter where we spent our pocket money on sweets. My sister still has some of the books that she read most avidly – indeed one still has the lending label from Mr & Mrs Boreham’s shop marked with her name, so it seems that she forgot to return it. There are children’s/young readers’ classics (Anne of Green Gables, Huckleberry Finn, Little Men). She also read books, popular in their day, but now faded from memory. Jane Shaw’s The Tall Man, one of a series of tales of the adventures of four children in Switzerland. Fiction for Girl Guides was a flourishing market for publishers, including Diana Pares’ Hawthorn Patrol, a source in fictional form of advice about how to be a good Girl Guide.  Reading eventually included adult classics such as Jane Eyre. My sister says that she read avidly two to three books a week sometimes staying up late to finish.

 

 

My sister-in-law (married to my eldest brother) recalled: “I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t reading, although I do remember getting exasperated with children in my class that were slow! A group of us stood around the teacher’s desk and read a sentence each from the same book! As for my own books, I loved Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I remember having two Listen with Mother [a BBC radio programme] storybooks which I read and re-read, and from when I was a little older, The Secret Garden was a firm favourite. I was brought up on Enid Blyton, of course, and had all the ‘… of Adventure‘ books [eight books about the adventures of two girls and two boys who solve mysteries]. One thing of which I am certain is that a child who is read to develops a love of books for themselves. My mother read to me every night until we were able to share books together, and I feel so pleased that all our three children read avidly and have a great regard for books of all types.”

 

Our own sons had relatively little exposure to the public library, mostly because we had lots of books at home, particularly any published by Macmillan that I picked up at work. Our eldest remembers C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books and Richmal Crompton’s Just William titles, both long-running tales of schoolboy escapades. Both are well-written humorous and very much idealized portraits of well-to-do English small-town or rural society. They are also decidedly old-fashioned and reflect class attitudes of their day, but their writing and humour still appeals. Jan and I also remember that our son adored Humphrey Carpenter’s Mr Majeka tales of a teacher with magical powers, Gillian Cross’ The Demon Headmaster, featuring a megalomaniac hypnotist out to rule the world. Clearly, school humour appealed. Robin Jarvis’s rather dark books for early teens were a great favourite, his Deptford Mice books, in which a young girl mouse called Audrey battles the sewer rats, the Whitby Witches series and others. Jack London’s Canadian Call of the Wild, was another favourite (as it had been of his father).

 

Our middle son (a dyslexic reader) recalls fondly Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child, an endearing tale of clockwork toys who long to become self-winding, a quest that proves unsuccessful. Like his elder brother, he had a Canadian wilderness favourite, Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, a story of a 13-year-old boy’s survival in the Canadian wilderness.

 

Our youngest son’s bedtime reading included one or two Harry Potter books, until we both decided that the were stories well told, but lacked something to tempt us to read more. We changed to all of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, a much more satisfying read for both son and father. Another beautifully written favourite was Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, a gripping story of the battle of the Light against the Dark. I can still visualize some of the episodes.

 

As a bedtime reader, I found the Peter Rabbit books insufferably dull. Later, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books were tedious (as were the films). A brilliant series for younger years was the Church Mice books. Written and illustrated by Graham Oakley, these books combined visual humour and witty dialogue that were endearingly funny for both child and adult.

 

The partners of two of our sons also contributed memories of books that inspired them: our eldest son’s American partner recalls the Dr Seuss books, and our youngest’s Japanese lady read her aunt’s Grimms’ Fairy Tales book when she visited her grandmother’s home in Yokohama.

 

Jan tells me that she and her siblings were taken every week to the public library in Beaconsfield (this was a family expedition since her mother did not drive at the time). The children were free to choose whatever books they liked. Although she adds that the teachers at her convent school discourage reading Enid Blyton.

 

Jan’s brother told me: “My first recollections are of Beatrix Potter I suppose, I remember Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians, Nicholas Monsarrat’s Three Corvettes and The Cruel Sea [Monsarrat was a notable author of books of naval heroism in World War II] came along later. I soon became more interested in non-fiction in our local library and also the encyclopaedias in Dad’s workroom which at that time became a great way to dip in and discover subjects and people I didn’t know existed, I found it fascinating.” Jan remembers that all three Waddams children enjoyed dipping into Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, first published in magazine form in 1908.

My brother-in-law’s wife said: “The books that I loved as a child were “The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books and her Malory Towers series [set in a girls’ boarding school], pony books by Christine Pullein-Thompson [who wrote more than 100 pony books for children; her mother, two sisters and her daughter wrote another 100 or so], Black Beauty, Jill books by Ruby Ferguson [a writer of popular romance and mystery books for adults, and of nine pony books for children].” As you might guess from this selection, my sister-in-law is a keen horsewoman.

 

A number of friends responded to the item on my blog. One comment was: “Re: Jan's interest in biographies at a young age. I vividly remember reading Amelia Earhart: Girl Aviatrix as a child. I was thrilled to realize girls could do such things!”

 

A friend in the USA, who is a nurse noted: “I loved dog books —- Travels with Charlie, Lad, a Dog, Lassie Come Home, Old Yeller and the Incredible Journey. Also Heidi, all the Cherry Ames books (of course, she’s a nurse) [27 mystery novels set in hospitals, written by Ames and later Julie Campbell Tatham] and all the Nancy Drew books [possibly not literally all, since some 620 have been published; Nancy Drew, the principal character is a teenage sleuth]. I also liked horse books:  Black Beauty, Black Stallion and Misty of Chincoteague.  Let’s just say I was all about animals until I found boys.”

 

Her husband, who shares with me a great admiration of Joseph Conrad, had a different story to tell: “I did not grow up in a house of readers. And I don’t recall any books I fell in love with as a child ... What eventually caught my interest was when I was a preteen, comics. Archie, Superman and especially Mad Magazine, a caustic, subversive hilarious publication [that] American boys in the early 60s were devoted to. In my all-boys Catholic prep high school, I remember falling for Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, Animal Farm by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The main limitation on my education was the emphasis on finding the moral of the story, at the complete expense of how the author told the tale. Then I read Joyce’s Dubliners my first year in college. Then Saint Augustine’s Confessions. And then the same year A Hundred Years of Solitude. All under the guiding hand of a terrific professor. I’ve been hooked ever since.”

 

A friend who is a college professor in Indianapolis recalled a Christmas present from 1961, The Golden Book of America: Stories from our Country’s Past Adapted for Young Readers From American Heritage. He told me: “I was the in third grade. I read it cover to cover during the next few years. Most memorably two years later, I was home sick from school reading it in my back hall bedroom on a particular November Friday. Hearing some commotion in our front hall, I paused from reading the article titled "The Proud Fighting Firemen."  Entering the living room, I heard my grandmother calling down the front stairs to my mother. It was the tragic news from Dallas, Texas. By the way, I kept a copy of the book proudly on display in the college office you visited, once upon a time. In the classroom I'd show it to spark student interest in what I labeled for them as 'the fascinating story of the American people."”

 

To sum up, some of the early childhood favourites were well-established classics, and are therefore hardly surprising. Some reflected childhood passions (ponies, horses, dogs) that became part of adult life. Some authors were enormously popular in their day, but are much less celebrated today. Some were prolific and ploughed a particular furrow: Christine Pullein-Thompson and her family for example. Still well-known today, Enid Blyton authored some 762 books according to Wikipedia. As to how people start to read, the public library was the key for some, but many routes can read to a love of reading.

Dignity

  

We have a neighbour who is a (now retired) Major in the Blues and Royals, a regiment of the Household Cavalry. When he. was about to be sent to Afghanistan at the height of the war on terror, his mother came to Sunninghill to have dinner with him and his wife before he left for his tour of duty. His wife told me that his mother said to him “You might die.” He was sent to a very dangerous place in Helmand Province; so much so that all supplies were flown in by helicopters travelling low and at speed, and dropped by parachute. When a British Minister came to visit, the troops were to have a special breakfast of eggs and bacon, but alas the parachute failed to open and the eggs arrived ready-scrambled. Fortunately, my neighbour did not die, and he never mentioned any colleague who was killed, but he did visit wounded comrades in hospital in Birmingham. According to the BBC the rate of casualties (but, of course, not the absolute number) of British soldiers was higher than that of the US military.

 

The reason for telling you this anecdote is that today’s news in the UK is dominated by remarks made by President Trump in an interview with Fox News, that NATO troops did not serve on the front line in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump contends that we Europeans are cowards who have been protected by the USA, but have never done anything to support America. Our Prime minister has called the remarks “insulting and frankly appalling,” and added that if he has “misspoken in that way … I would certainly apologise.”

 

At a dinner in Oxford last night a visiting professor from the USA brought up Mr. Trump’s behaviour. Those of us who had spent time in the USA (in my case over some forty years) agreed that the default behaviour of Americans is an innate courtesy, but not, it seems, of the present President nor of his colleagues in government. This morning I was reminded of an old friend (now deceased) Colonel Robert Nichols, who is buried in Arlington Cemetery, and of his daughter who served in the army like her father. Bob believed without qualification that it was his duty to uphold the honour and dignity of America’s armed forces. I do not doubt that he would have been appalled by his current Commander-in-Chief’s lack of dignity and innate moral coruption, and of his Secretary of War, and other government officials.

What did YOU read?

 

In the UK 2026 is the National Year of Reading. The National Literacy Trust estimates that some 5 million adults in my country are functionally illiterate (defined as having a reading age equivalent to that of an 11-year-old child). At the prize giving of one of my sons’ schools the speaker said that he often visited the building of the Trades Union Congress for meetings and came to know a security guard who worked there. This guard was always reading his newspaper at all hours of the day. However, the speaker later discovered that the apparently avid reader was absolutely unable to read – he bought his newspaper to conceal his shame.

 

I have spent my working life in a world of literate people, and find it difficult to comprehend a world in which an adult cannot read.

 

The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 has been promoting the National Year of Reading in 2026 by inviting writers to talk about the book that encouraged them to read, and to read an extract from it. A few days ago, Val Mcdermid chose The Wind in the Willows and read an extract in which a young woman proposes a plan to Toad, in jail for diving too fast, to escape dressed as her aunt, the prison washer woman. Thisreminded me of reading of Toad’s stay in prison. He is brought a plate of toast lavishly buttered, so much so that the butter drips through holes in the toast. I remember my mouth watering as I read.

 

Jan recalls reading The Wind in the Willows and Toad of Toad Hall. Also, girls’ books, which I would have avoided of course: Ballet Shoes, the Heidi books, Little Women, What Katie Did. The public library had a collection of biographies of great figures from history, which she recalls borrowing.

 

The Central Library in Ipswich also had a section of those biographies. I worked my way steadily through the shelves, I had a thing for history: great favourites were Rosemary Sutcliffe’s books (The Eagle of the Ninth and so on) and Robert Graves.

 

Which has made me wonder what you remember reading. Send me your lists and I’ll compile them for the blog.

 

We will be making our own contribution to the National Year of Reading in Sunninghill on 20 April when six authors will visit our primary school to fill the day with talk of books:

 

Fiona Barker (https://fionabarker.co.uk/)

Tilly Rand-Bell (https://www.tiliarandbell.com/)

Nicholas Allan (https://www.nicholasallan.co.uk/)

Laura Mucha (https://lauramucha.com/)

David Barker (https://davidbarkerauthor.co.uk/)

Ally Sherrick (https://allysherrick.com)

 

Nicholas Allan is also a member of the Magic Circle and proved his ability to read my mind over lunch.

Calibri: not so woke after all

 

One reason for maintaining my blog is that it keeps me in touch with friends in many different places, who often know more about a topic than I do. Toby Bainton wrote the following to me about the question of the Calibri and Times New Roman typefaces prompted by Secretary Marco Rubio’s designation of Times New Roman as the official typeface of the State Department, suggesting that the adoption of Calibri had been a wasteful DEIA initiative of the Biden administration:

 

“I have a strictly amateur interest in typography. Stanley Morison designed Times New Roman fulfilling a commission from The Times, which wanted, not surprisingly, a type which is legible in newspaper columns at very small sizes. The design is brilliant for that purpose. It is also very good as a normal-sized type for letterpress work, and was for many years the standard type used by HMSO.  It is pretty useless as a display face, for example in very large sizes, such as on the side of an aircraft. In those instances it looks bland and lacking in style. That's because it was designed for a quite different purpose.

Sans serif faces are nowadays generally preferred for reading on a computer screen. This has less to do with the serifs themselves than with the gradations of width in the appearance of letters with serifs. You only need to take a look at a lower case e in Times New Roman to see that it has marked variations in the thickness of the letter-form across its curves. This helps legibility on the page but causes problems once computers come in.

In computer-based work, typefaces are routinely blown up or shrunk down optically. If you do this with a thick-and-thin serif type, you get less legible results than with the more uniform cross-section of sans serif type. This is because when you enlarge or shrink something optically, the height and breadth of the letter may be (for example) doubled or halved, but if you double or halve the x-height, the *area* of shading on the thick-and-thin strokes then increases or decreases by a factor of four. This is simple arithmetic but it makes a crucial difference to the appearance of the letter.

Personally my ideal when reading is a serif type in good crisp letterpress. Very rare these days. Sans serif types are generally best as display faces (for example, the ubiquitous Gill Sans is fantastically successful as a display face but quite tiring to read in small sizes as a text face). But sans serif faces have their value in text on the screen for mathematical reasons. You can get away more easily with optical re-sizing, with less apparent distortion to the letter form.

 

So my conclusion regarding Times New Roman versus Calibri is that in the computer-based text age, Calibri is (unfortunately) better for everyone, whether visually-impaired or not. This has nothing to do with wokery – you just have to do the math.”

 

Another friend, Colin Ridler, a colleague from Thames & Hudson days, commented:

 

“In fact, Ian, serifs are there to AID readability because they hold the eye on the line left to right.
As for T[hames] & H[udson], while I agree the best designers consider readability, much depends on leading and typesize as well as typeface. Often designers, who come from graphic design courses, are trained to think about pictures on a page, with text readability a secondary concern. Moreover, some designers are not READERS and set text too small or with too long a line length. But in your field of textbooks, readability is emphasized more. “

 

Lastly, I discussed serif and sans serif with my brother-in-law, a former graphic designer.  He said that his designs maintained a consistent look (including typeface) across the different elements of a campaign (ad, brochure etc.). For his work, serif was generally selected for work that referred to tradition and history. Sans serif conveyed a sense of modernity.