January always brings with it a sense of regeneration, and this year at 4th Estate that sense was heightened as the date of our office move drew near. We spent December in a state of flux, archiving hundreds of books and packing up our things, in doing so unearthing a wunderkammer’s worth of bizarre items including a giraffe jawbone, a piñata, an artillery shell, and a cut-out of Dolly Parton. We were admittedly nervous about moving from our cosy Hammersmith home, and reticent about moving to the open-plan, glass-walled heights of London Bridge. After all, T.S. Eliot compared the commuters of London Bridge to the lost souls of Dante’s limbo in The Wasteland:
We’ve been clearing out our offices and archiving the most interesting of items in preparation for our move to London Bridge in January. Over the next month or so we’ll be sharing anything of GREAT interest that we find with you. To start with, we flick through a satisfyingly large magazine we published to celebrate our 21st…
Back in 2005, the word ‘kindle’ was principally a verb, the word ‘Amazon’ was generally synonymous with a rainforest, and Hilary Mantel’s mantelpiece was conspicuously lacking in Booker Prizes. Here at 4th Estate, we were busy publishing future classics like Mantel’s Beyond Black, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory and Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries. Read more…
On Tuesday evening, despite occupying a position of near complete ignorance on the subject, I attempted to explain the concept of geocaching to a friend. As far as I understand, someone hides something somewhere out of the way, posts the location someplace online and waits for someone else to find it. I went on to say that the treasure might not be valuable in a monetary sense, and at that, my friend’s interest waned even more.
