Audiobooks by Simon Garfield

In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World

In Miniature takes a big look at small things. It is a celebration of the obsessive, eccentric and meticulous, and welcomes us into the world of collectors, modellers and fans. Simon Garfield is a master of finding delight and fascination in unlikely places and here we discover flea circuses, 1,000 tiny Hitlers, miniature crime scenes, model villages and railways, minuscule food and a dozen more intricately examined pursuits. Each object considered plots the course of a new miniature byway, and in unexpected ways lets us see our world in a whole new light. It is a wide-ranging exploration of the history, psychology and fanaticism attached to working and playing in tiny worlds of our own making. We bring things down to size to understand and appreciate them. This book does the same.

Simon Garfield (Author), Adrian Scarborough (Narrator)

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Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain

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

Simon Garfield (Author), Amanda Carlton, Christopher Scott, Jeffrey Perry, Joan Walker, Moir Leslie, Simon Garfield (Narrator)

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Just My Type: A Book about Fonts

Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product that we buy. But where do they come from, and why do we need so many? Who is responsible for the staid practicality of Times New Roman, the cool anonymity of Arial, or the irritating levity of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)? Typefaces are now 560 years old, but we barely knew their names until about twenty years ago when the pull-down font menus on our first computers made us all the gods of type. Beginning in the early days of Gutenberg and ending with the most adventurous digital fonts, Simon Garfield explores the rich history and subtle powers of type. He goes on to investigate a range of modern mysteries, including how Helvetica took over the world, what inspires the seeming ubiquitous use of Trajan on bad movie posters, and exactly why the all-type cover of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus was so effective. It also examines why the "T" in the Beatles logo is longer than the other letters and how Gotham helped Barack Obama into the White House. A must-have book for the design conscious, Just My Type's cheeky irreverence will also charm everyone who loved Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Schott's Original Miscellany.

Simon Garfield (Author), Gildart Jackson (Narrator)

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