Simon Garfield

Simon Frank Garfield (born 19 March 1960) is a British journalist and non-fiction author. He has written for publications such as Time Out, The Independent, and The Observer. His early work focused on the music industry, but his books have increasingly delved into niche topics, from British wrestling and the invention of mauve to the history of encyclopedias and typefaces. Garfield is based in London.

Career

Early life and career Simon Frank Garfield was born in London on 19 March 1960 to Herbert Sidney and Hella Helene Garfield. He went on to study at the London School of Economics, where he focused more on writing for The Beaver, the understaffed student newspaper, than his studies, and became joint editor. Garfield later recalled that it was "the best fun you could have apart from student riots," but the staff realized "we'd never have so much journalistic control again". He was awarded Student Journalist of the Year by The Guardian in 1981, which led him to get employed briefly at the Radio Times as subeditor of the BBC Radio 3 listings.

In 1981 and 1982, Garfield worked as a scriptwriter for BBC radio documentaries. He moved on to Time Out, where he served as editor in 1988 and 1989. His first two were on exploitation in the music industry. Money for Nothing: Greed and Exploitation in the Music Industry (1986) was praised by Booklist 's Peter L. Robinson as an "insider's account" which had "all the ingredients that produce a juicy public spectacle." In a three-volume anthology Our Hidden Lives (2004), We Are at War (2005) and Private Battles (2006) Garfield edited diaries from the archives of Mass-Observation, He is now a trustee of the archives.

Garfield appeared on 25 February 2013 episode of The Colbert Report to discuss why he wrote On the Map.

Garfield's book To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence is one of the inspirations behind the charity event Letters Live.

In 2023, Garfield published a trilogy of books called The ABC of Fonts, featuring the following slim volumes:

Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface Albertus: The Biography of a Typeface Baskerville: The Biography of a Typeface

In 2024 it was announced Canongate had signed Garfield to write a "lively, idiosyncratic and global history" of the pen, to be called The Pen.

Personal life Garfield lives in Hampstead, London, He was previously married to the playwright Diane Samuels.