Simon Garfield
Simon Garfield is the author of fourteen acclaimed books of non-fiction including On the Map, Just My Type and The Wrestling. His edited diaries from the Mass Observation Archive, Our Hidden Lives, We Are At War and Private Battles, were bestsellers, and his study of AIDS in Britain, The End of Innocence, won the Somerset Maugham prize. He lives in London and St Ives, Cornwall.
Small world: Why we love tiny things
Simon Garfield was in the Observer at the weekend, writing about making a version of himself small enough to hold in his hand, and the endless fascination of all things miniature: those worlds within worlds, from toy towns to dolls houses and beyond.
Observer
“What is going on in our world that can possibly explain such a fervent desire to shrink it?”
Simon Garfield considers the compulsion towards making miniatures in a Guardian longread about little things.
Guardian
“Garfield is an engaging writer who has stuffed Timekeepers with some fascinating material…thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating. Timely, you could even say”
Robin McKie
The Guardian
“Throughout this wonderful book, Pratt demonstrates acute descriptive powers and a piercing intelligence. It’s in describing her loneliness that she forges the deepest communion with the reader”
Anita Sethi
The Guardian
“Letters have the power to grant us a larger life. They reveal motivation and deepen understanding. They are evidential. They change lives, and they rewire history”
“We have brought this cauldron of rush upon ourselves. Time seems faster because we have made it so”
Simon Garfield talks at Ideacity about the importance of letter writing in our current technology driven era, unpacks famous love letters and why they are important historically.