There is no time for complacency, the next attack on knowledge is about to happen. Richard Ovenden, Burning the Books (2020) The British Library has been a news story of late, and not a happy one. On 28 October 2023 the Library fell victim to a cyber-attack. A criminal group named Rhysida infiltrated the Library’sRead More
One of the special features of the British Library’s Breaking the News exhibition is a large-scale panorama, created by designers Northover&Brown. Objects and graphics have been placed into flowing pictures of networks, places and people, tracing the changing ways in which we have discovered the news over five centuries, from town squares to what ElonRead More
Two years I wrote about an exhibition of the remarkable infographics of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and said that I was working on an exhibition of infographics myself, due to be shown at the British Library in August 2020. Then fate intervened.Read More
Here’s some breaking news for you… On 22 April, and running until 21 August 2022, the British Library will be hosting a major exhibition on the history of news in Britain. Entitled Breaking the News, it will (according to the press release) spotlight the role news plays in our society, exploring issues of choice, interpretation,Read More
It’s a mad world out there. For too long there has been no escape into galleries, those places where disorder should dissolve and the eye focus on things that make sense. Elusively at times, but sense nonetheless. Now, in Britain at least, and for the time being at least, Covid-19 restrictions are retreating, letting galleriesRead More
At the start of the current exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, you are told that 25% of the people on the planet play video games. I am one of the 75%. I do not play video games; indeed, I do not think I have played a video game of any kindRead More
According to the BBC’s handy calculator, Will a robot take your job?, there is a 38% chance of my being replaced by a robot at some point in the future. Out of a list of 366 jobs, based on research by Oxford University, a curator (or archivist) comes in at number 206 of jobs atRead More
Contrary to conventional wisdom, I like to judge a book by its cover. If the cover looks good, then the results inside tend to be good also. The better the content, the more inspired the jacket designer must feel. Certainly this has been my rule when judging the use of paintings for book covers. IRead More
To Pallant House Gallery at the weekend, in Chichester – the first time I’ve been to this rather fine gallery made up of a Queen Anne house with modern extension. It’s primarily devoted to modern British art, with fine examples of Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, David Bomberg, Ivon Hitchens, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Michael Andrews,Read More
Few railway stations can offer a grander view of the town that they serve than Margate. As you step out of the station, the full sweep of the bay opens up before you: the low waves ebbing over flat sands, a great line of amusement parlours, shops and hotels following the leftward curve of theRead More