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Archive for March, 2016

The Visitors’ Book

Monday, March 7th, 2016

We’ve just come back from a wonderful weekend with friends in Norfolk. Staying with friends is an unalloyed delight until the time comes to leave. Even if the delight was alloyed in any way, it will be as nothing to the gut-churning misery induced by mine host popping his head cheerily round the door in the midst of your packing and asking “Would you mind? It’s silly, I know, but it’s become a sort of tradition for us. Just a few words! Nothing special!” And there I stand, a pile of knickers in one hand, shaving stuff in the other, trying to transfer them into one hand so I can accept the proffered tastefully leather-bound Smythson (it’s only ever Smythson) visitors’ book.

I once spent three days in the French village of Hautrives, in the Drôme, long before the days of the internet. I was there doing a TV programme for the Discovery Channel about the world’s greatest folly, the Palais Idéal of the Facteur Cheval. If you like follies, even just a little, then a visit is mandatory. It is simply spectacular. I’ve seen more follies than most, and this is unquestionably Number One.

Palais Idéal

However television programmes take a long time to make, and this gave me plenty of thinking space, which in turn led to a revelation. People have puzzled over the postman Ferdinand Cheval’s motives and reasons for years — what drove him to create this masterpiece? The answer grew inside me over 72 hours, and finally it manifested itself: there is bugger all else to do in Hautrives. It is the most boring village in France, and that is saying a lot.

The lovely Carey-Ann Strelecki, the programme’s director, was busy all day on placement shots and only had time for me in the evening. When I wasn’t nursing a cheap beer I passed most of the day with the genial Pascal Cambrillat, then the Directeur of the Monument, comparing the cocoa mass of different chocolates. This was before the internet, remember. Nobody did anything.

While rootling around in Pascal’s office I discovered the Registre des Visiteurs, the Visitors’ Book (not by Smythson) for the Palais Idéal. The first entry was January 1st, 1905, before the Palais was anything like the size it became, and it was from a Jules Pangon, Docteur de Médecin de St. Vallier (Drôme), who wrote “De plus en plus enthousiasme pour la beauté et originalité incomparable de ce Palais Imaginaire” (More and more enthusiastic about the unmatched beauty and originality of this Dream Palace). Evidently this ran in the family, because Dr. Pangon was Pascal Cambrillat’s great-grandfather.

I leafed through the book. In the early days everyone who visited inscribed their name; later, with the rise of mass tourism, it was reserved for more distinguished visitors. In that first year there was a visitor from Monaco; a visitor from Lucca in Italy, one Isola Fortuna (Happy Island?); a traveller from Constantinople; the Marquis du Briand, and some strangely named people from London — a Mr J Chardonnet, S Woeskott and Chartrose Cloves (really?). There was a Walter Wrackmeyer from Germany and then some more realistic English names: F E Ward from Leatherhead, Mrs C F Olive from London, Dorothy and Peter Ridley from Chelmsford, Lewis MacPherson from Manchester — all in 1905.

Then the great and the good of France paraded through the pages. I fast-forwarded closer towards my era: Lawrence Durrell on May 6th 1961; Eric de Rothschild, Paris, on January 1st 1962; Ian and Judy Nairn, October 21st 1961, who wrote “Avec toute mon admiration pour ce travail immense.” (With all my admiration for this huge work).

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely visited from Paris on January 31st 1963. The visit inspired Saint Phalle to create the Giardino dei Tarocchi in Grossetto. In March 1965 Michael Gill the BBC film director was there, followed the succeeding year by novelist John Berger, hailing from Geneva, with the artist Lionel Miskin from Mevagissey.

Two final names were spotted: on May 22nd 1982 Susan Sontag wrote “Un rêve depuis vingt-cinq ans, enfin accompli,”  (Finally, after 25 years, a dream fulfilled) and five years before he died the idiosyncratic Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser commented on July 25th, 1995 “Un but dans ma vie.” (A goal in my life).

But then they didn’t have to spend three days there.

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The Gulf War Memorial Inscription at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016
There is a new war memorial at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire to the 47 gallant British servicemen killed in the first Gulf War.

I approve wholeheartedly, and would have supported the endeavour in some way had I known about it before.

But they have spoilt the ship for a ha’porth of tar.

When creating the inscription, they employed a translator to turn it into Latin, but they omitted to employ a typographer for a few pounds more. This is what they ended up with:

_88487777_de27-1

It’s set in Times New Roman. That could have been someone’s choice, until you see the quote marks, dashes, kerning — or lack of any of them.

Nobody chose Times New Roman. Someone has typed it out and handed it as it was, unthinkingly, to the manufacturer. It is appalling. It is cheap. It is nasty. It is thoughtless. It is undignified.

They’ve used the first font that opened on their machine. I’m astounded it wasn’t Arial. They have used typewriter quote marks instead of typographic quote marks, so they chose

 Screen Shot 2016-03-01 at 15.03.02
here set in Bulmer instead of Times. But why use quotation marks at all? What are they doing here? They are not required here; this is simply ungrammatical. This is potatoe’s.

And look at the dashes. They are not dashes; they are hyphen-minuses, only to be used by typewriters. Typographers have a choice of em dashes, en dashes, quotation dashes, hyphens, minuses and no doubt many more I haven’t heard of — a plethora of dash marks. They have different widths and different lengths for their different purposes. All ignored here, of course. The hyphen-minus will do — what more do you need?

I would have proposed something like this. Trajan is almost unbeatable for inscriptions, and a little letter spacing adds the simple majesty a war memorial requires. Forget the quotation marks, and note the completely differing dashes:

Trajan Inscription

I’m sure the last thing the organisers wanted was an undignified tribute in hackneyed old Times New Roman. But they didn’t know any better. And our soldiers deserved better.

When I presented my brother-in-law Andrew, a former British Ambassador, with my book The Encyclopaedia of Fonts, he responded “I never knew there was more than one.”

Andrew didn’t tell me whether he was on the Inscriptions Committee.

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