Schott's Original Miscellany

Product Information

In 2002, Ben turned a Christmas card into his first book — Schott’s Original Miscellany—which within weeks was a bestseller.

Schott’s Miscellany (32.45) — The Billions Companion Schott’s Miscellany (32.45) — The Billions Companion

Schott's Original Miscellany was published with little fanfare in 2002, but after an article in the Guardian, in which the book was described as the "publishing sensation of the year", sales increased, and within weeks Schott's Original Miscellany was at No. He is married to the award-winning travel editor, Pavia Rosati; lives and works in London; and finds writing in the third-person awkward. The first edition of Schott's Almanac was published in Britain in 2005, followed by yearly editions published in Britain, America, and Germany until 2010. Intelligent entertainment at a high level, timedperfectly for out post-modern, deconstructed, andoverall scatterbrained time of age. Schott introduced the 2006 Almanac with a quote from Ben Hecht: "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock".

I managed to persuade The Pear Tree Press (the one in Stevenage, not the one in Jamaica) to print 50 hard-back copies. As a photographerBen worked with The Independent, The Times, The Sunday Times, Reader’s Digest, and Sunday Business, amongst many others, and has photographed a wealth of celebrities from Hugh Grant and Tony Blair, to Gordon Brown and Enoch Powell.

Schott ABOUT | Ben Schott

Schott typeset the book himself and had 50 copies privately printed by the Pear Tree Press in Stevenage. To make this somewhat dry content a little more palatable, I added a host of zesty curiosities: the kind of information at the back of our minds and on the tips of our tongue — like wine bottle sizes and unusual phobias. While the first two were best-sellers (Schott had two books simultaneously in the Sunday Times top ten), sales did not match the success of the first book.Walter Thompson, Ben spent most of his twenties as a freelance portrait photographer for a diverse range of editorial and commercial clients.

Schott MISCELLANIES | Ben Schott

Things began to get a little crazy when, without warning, The Guardiandevoted the cover ofG2to the Miscellanyand, amazingly, declared the book “the publishing sensation of the year. Tony Blair asked Schott if he would like to see then-baby Leo; Cherie barked at him not to take too long as they were about to have lunch. Schott's Original Miscellany is, without doubt, the oldest, and possibly merriest title you will come across in a long day's march through the shimmering desert of contemporary publishing". A profile in The Times said "his subjects included John Prescott, who was rude, and Sir Roy Strong, who had "the most wonderful, doleful eyes" and told him: "You must realise I'm awfully photogenic. He has regularly acknowledged the influence of the work of Edward Tufte in influencing the look and feel of his books.

In 2003, I decided to create a little booklet of information of use to photographers, designers, and picture editors. In November 2018 his first novel, a pastiche Jeeves book titled Jeeves and the King of Clubs, was published by Little, Brown, and Company. The Almanacs shared the same look and feel as the Miscellanies – but were substantially longer and larger.