Six Things, Volume 45

Pteranodon | Illustrations | Signs | Conkers | Automata | Dark hotels

Nov 25, 2023

I had a brilliant time at the Royal Society Science Book Prize award ceremony on Wednesday evening. Ed Yong’s An Immense World was the deserving winner (all the shortlisted books are well worth exploring). To be on the shortlist was a surprising honour, and I was delighted not just for myself but also for my superb publishers, Elliott & Thompson, who regularly punch above their weight in an extraordinarily competitive market.

Before the announcement there were two panels, chaired by Samira Ahmed, in which we all talked about our books and science writing in general. You can watch it, and the rest of the ceremony, here. (My contribution starts about eleven minutes in, and it’s definitely worth watching Ed Yong’s acceptance speech from 57 minutes).

And just a reminder that you have till 2359 UK time tonight (Saturday) to enter the Taking Flight giveaway.

Now, on to the Things.

Thing 1 – Pteranodon

If I came out of the process of writing Taking Flight with one mission, it was to educate the world about the magnificence of pterosaurs. You can’t heave a brick in a museum shop* these days without hitting a cuddly dinosaur, and there’s barely a seven-year-old alive who can’t reel off a list of their Fifty Favourite Sauropods. But their airborne crested cousins barely get a look in, usually relegated to a nearly-honourable mention on the (usually inaccurate) lines of ‘oh and up there is a Pterodactyl’ (go here for an explanation of the difference and here for a general introduction to pterosaurs. And there is a whole chapter on them in Taking Flight, so, you know…)

*Important disclaimer: heaving bricks, especially in enclosed spaces, and especially in the vicinity of humans both adult and non-adult, is dangerous, almost certainly illegal, and emphatically not recommended by the producers of this newsletter, who take absolutely no responsibility for the repercussions of brick-heaving, whether museum-shop-related or not.

So to further my evangelical cause, here’s a fine short film about possibly (probably) the best pterosaur: Pteranodon, made by the excellent Moth Light Media.

Thing 2 – Illustrations

Yesterday was the first National Illustration Day, and a most worthwhile venture it proved – evidence that the good side of the-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter is still capable of flickering into life.

Moose Allain’s tweet of reminiscence spawned a rich thread in which people shared their own favourites: Briggs, Hughes, Kerr, Ahlberg, Searle, Shepard, Beresford, Uderzo, Hergé, Blake, and on and on and on. Moose’s own nostalgia trigger is Edward Ardizzone’s cover for Stig of the Dump, and as we’re of similar age I too only need a glimpse of it to be sent into a Proustian swoon.

Visual art in books (not unlike music in films) has a subtle and stealthy effect on the reader’s experience. Imagining those staples of my own childhood, Asterix and Tintin, with illustrations by, say, Pablo Picasso, is as ridiculous as the idea of a Bond movie with a soundtrack of late Beethoven string quartets. (Although, having had the idea, I now really want to see someone do Picasso Asterix).

And while I yield to nobody in my admiration for the work of Quentin Blake, who for several decades has been inextricably linked with the books of Roald Dahl, for those of us of a certain age the memories are different. For me, Danny, The Champion of the World will always be the version illustrated by Jill Bennett, and will look like this.

Here are some of my favourites from the day:

Signe Johanssen shared this double spread, from Tove Jansson’s The Dangerous Journey.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce shared this magical one by Jan Pienkowski.

Richard Scarry was of course a childhood favourite, and it was only a few years ago that I (along with many others, I suspect) came to the unpleasant realisation that those cheerful illustrations were undercut with extraordinary darkness.

The glory of Sempé.

And finally, in a different vein, this mussel by Anna Koska.

You can explore all the illustrations via the National Illustration Day hashtag on Twitter.

Thing 3 – Signs

This animation, made of many many road signs, is well worth two minutes and twenty-one seconds of your time.

Thing 4 – Conkers

There is a conker club in Peckham. More nostalgic swooning.

Thing 5 – Automata

Whether it’s a backlash against A.I., or yet another dollop of nostalgia, I don’t know, but I am extraordinarily fond of hand-made wind-up thingies. So these mechanical creations, the work of Oliver Pett, are right up my alley.

Especially this owl.