Simon Frank Garfield (born 19 March 1960) is a British journalist and non-fiction author.

Biography

Garfield was born in London in 1960.Simon Garfield
, Faber & Faber, retrieved 6 July 2011 He was educated at the independent University College School in Hampstead, London, and the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 mill ...

, where he was executive editor of '' The Beaver''. He won the

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

/ NUS 'Student Journalist of the Year' award in 1981, and the same year he became a sub-editor at the ''

Radio Times ''Radio Times'' (currently styled as ''RadioTimes'') is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in May 1923 by J ...

''. He wrote scripts for BBC radio documentaries in the early 1980s. He also wrote for ''

Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an enginee ...

'' magazine, acting as editor from 1988 to 1989. He has written for newspapers such as ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

'', ''

The Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'', and ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

'', and was named

Mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for vario ...

Journalist of the Year in 2005. He was among the clients of Pat Kavanagh at United Agents. He is the author of several books including ''Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Industry'', the Somerset Maugham Prize-winning ''The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS'', ''The Wrestling'', ''The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1'', and ''Mauve''. In 2010 his book '' Just My Type'' was published, exploring the history of typographic fonts.Gompertz, Will (2010)
Gomp/arts: Simon Garfield: A man of letters
, BBC, 18 October 2010, retrieved 6 July 2011Glancey, Jonathan (2010)
Just My Type by Simon Garfield and Manuale Tipographico by Giambattista Bodoni – review
, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'', 4 December 2010, retrieved 6 July 2011 Garfield appeared on 25 February 2013 episode of ''

The Colbert Report ''The Colbert Report'' ( ) is an American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by Stephen Colbert that aired four days a week on Comedy Central from October 17, 2005, to December 18, 2014, for 1,447 episodes. The show focu ...

'' to discuss why he wrote ''On the Map''. Garfield's book ''To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence'' is one of the inspirations behind the charity event ''

Letters Live Letters Live is a staged reading show of literary correspondence. It was created and developed in 2013 by independent publishing house Canongate Books in partnership with production company SunnyMarch. During the shows, actors read interesting, f ...

''.

Bibliography

Books

* * ''Money for Nothing: Greed and Exploitation in the Music Industry'' (1986) * ''The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS'' (1994) * ''The Wrestling'' (1996) * ''The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio One'' (1998) – (account of turmoil at BBC radio station) * ''

Mauve Mauve (, ; , ) is a pale purple color named after the mallow flower (French: ''mauve''). The first use of the word ''mauve'' as a color was in 1796–98 according to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', but its use seems to have been rare befo ...

: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World'' (2000) – (Victorian chemist

William Perkin Sir William Henry Perkin (12 March 1838 – 14 July 1907) was a British chemist and entrepreneur best known for his serendipitous discovery of the first commercial synthetic organic dye, mauveine, made from aniline. Though he failed in trying ...

and his development of

synthetic dyes A dye is a colored substance that chemically bonds to the substrate to which it is being applied. This distinguishes dyes from pigments which do not chemically bind to the material they color. Dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution and ...

), W. W. Norton & Company, * ''The Last Journey of William Huskisson'' (2002) – (pioneering development of steam railways in Britain) * ''Our Hidden Lives: The Everyday Diaries of a Forgotten Britain'' (2004) – (interwoven threads from five diaries from post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Britain) * ''We are at War: The Remarkable Diaries of Five Ordinary People'' (2005) – (interwoven accounts from five diaries from the period preceding World War II) * ''Private Battles: Our Intimate Diaries – How the War Almost Defeated Us'' (2006) – (interwoven accounts from four diaries of ordinary Britains living through World War II) * ''The Error World: An Affair With Stamps'' (2008) – (memoir of the author's

stamp collecting Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study (or combined study and collection) of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth ...

obsession) * ''The Wrestling'' – (British wrestling and its eccentric performers and fans) * ''Exposure: The Unusual Life and Violent Death of Bob Carlos Clarke'' (2009) – (Irish photographer and suicide) * ''

Mini The Mini is a small, two-door, four-seat car, developed as ADO15, and produced by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors, from 1959 through 2000. Minus a brief hiatus, original Minis were built for four decades and sold during ...

: The True and Secret History of the Making of a Motor Car'' (2009) * '' Just My Type: A Book About Fonts'' ( Profile Books Ltd, 2010) * ''On the Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does'' (

Profile Books Profile Books is a British independent book publishing firm founded in 1996. It publishes non-fiction subjects including history, biography, memoir, politics, current affairs, travel and popular science. Profile Books is distributed in the UK by ...

Ltd, 2012) * ''To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence – A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing'' (Canongate, 2013) * (as editor) ''A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of

Jean Lucey Pratt Jean Lucey Pratt (18 October, 1909–August, 1986) was an English writer and bookseller. She published little during her lifetime and is best known as a diarist. Her anonymous Mass-Observation diaries written in the 1940s were featured in three po ...

''. (Canongate, 2015) * ''Timekeepers: How The World Became Obsessed With Time'' (Canongate, 2016) * ''In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World'' (Canongate, 2018) * ''Dog's Best Friend: A Brief History of an Unbreakable Bond'' (

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld ...

, 2020) * ''All the Knowledge in the World : The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia'' (Orion Publishing, 2022)

Critical studies, reviews and biography

*''Smithsonian'' often changes the title of a print article when it is published online. This article is titled "The history of mapmaking, Jared Diamond’s latest and more recent books reviewed" online.

References

External links

* *
Our Hidden Lives, 2005 film-page

Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...

, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 18 December 2012
Video of Garfield's interview with Colbert
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garfield, Simon 1960 births Living people English male journalists English non-fiction writers People educated at University College School Rail transport writers English male non-fiction writers 20th-century British journalists 20th-century British non-fiction writers 20th-century English male writers 21st-century British journalists 21st-century British non-fiction writers 21st-century English male writers Journalists from London