Christopher Board

Christopher Board OBE is a British cartographer and academic. Among his special interests are the histories of cartography and of military mapping in colonial South Africa.

Career

Board was appointed a lecturer in geography at the London School of Economics from 1 October 1963, eventually retiring as a Senior Lecturer.

He served as chair of the UK Committee for Cartography, and of the British Cartographic Society. In 1980 he was a founder of the Charles Close Society, for the study of Ordnance Survey maps, and served as its chair for sixteen years to 2012. During his chairmanship, he almost doubled the society's membership. He edited the ICA Newsletter for several years from the mid-1990s. having earlier played a key role in its Commission of Cartographic Communication for seven years, after the death of its sitting chair.

His 1993 book with Peter Barber, head of maps at the British Library, Tales from the map room : fact and fiction about maps and their makers was a tie-in with the BBC television series Tales from the Map Room.

He has written text introductions for several reprints of old Ordnance Survey maps, published by Alan Godfrey Maps.

Honours

Board was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the International Cartographic Association in 1999,

Selected papers

"Maps as Models". In: Chorley R.J., and Haggett P. (eds.), Models in Geography. London: Methuen. 1967.