The proper art of map-making, explained and illustrated
Author: Tim
Tim is one half of Bryars & Bryars. He specialises in maps and is co-organiser of the London Map Fair, the largest of its kind in the world. He co-authored a book, A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps, which you can order from this website.
How To Read Maps: Dedication, That’s What You Need
Mary, Mary: Where Did Your Bookshop Go?
On the trail of Mary Camige and Mary Sims, poster artists and co-owners of the Portman Bookstore
Beyond Claret Country: Louis Larmat and the First National Wine Atlas
Still Minding The Gap
Recent posts about the lives of some of the less well known makers of London Underground maps generated a flurry of very pleasant correspondence. Thank you! This piece is all about encouraging even more of it, especially if you have any information about anyone who made maps for London Transport…
John Speed’s Big Top Mystery
A tentative investigation into a pavilion symbol that keeps turning up on maps with no explanation…
Noble Seats & How To Spot Them
From our How To Read Maps series: the depiction of great estates as a distinctive and prominent feature of English county cartography
A Quantum of Knowledge
The Man Who Sacked Harry Beck: Rethinking Harold Hutchison
A deeper dive into the life and works of Harold F Hutchison, a London underground map designer mostly famous for sacking Harry Beck. We’ve done our share of Hutch-shaming over the years, so consider this a mea culpa…
Mind The Gap! Underground mapmakers revealed…
Let’s look at three names which appear on maps of the London underground: WE Soar, JC Betts, and EG Perman. These names are familiar but normally catalogued (by me and everyone else, including the Transport Museum) with surname and initials as given, without further elucidation. Who were they?