Thames & Hudson

I work in publishing.

I manage the PR and marketing for the fashion list at an art publisher, Thames & Hudson.

So I tend to be quite knackered.

And when I come home in the evenings, I try to no longer punish myself for wanting to have a bath and to watch Will and Grace and eat pasta in bed, you know, because I know that somewhere down the line, the writing will come.

I, I think, like I...

I'm so proud of doing beautiful books with Thames & Hudson, and I'm particularly proud of Flower Power.

I think that they have this incredible kind of...

They have this magic and mystery, like you say to them.

And so I think being able to speak directly to your audience to really shape possibilities to be useful as well and to support them in their journey to feel like you're alongside them in the garden, to also distill some of the things that we work with very, in a very technical way when we do these really complex technical planting designs, like distilling some of those ideas down into a book that anyone could pick up, like that, that has been a very important part of our purpose and of great meaning to me.

So I think that going forward it will be a really interesting time to make different books.

I think we're at that point where I still see books on my horizon, and I love working with Thames & Hudson and creating these beautiful, glorious things.

And the collaboration with the photographer Sarah Pannell has been so glorious and rich.

I suppose there's just an aspect of time, people who have worked with it for a long time.

It's something that came up a lot in the conversation with David Graeber and then also with Thomas Waters, who has also a book from Thames & Hudson out about magic recently, where this class of people who are de-witchers or fairy doctors or people that kind of understood magic and spiritual stuff and were called on to make distinctions between true and false paths and ideas has been sort of eliminated.

And some of that has been the total secularization of authority, I would say.

I don't like that word, but the secularization of authority.

Let's sort of go modern now because you call yourself the weedy one.

You managed to convince a major publisher a few years ago, Thames & Hudson, who were a major academic publisher, to publish a book on eating wild.

Now, Why would one of the world's biggest academic publishers decide to publish a peasant's manuscript?

Because they were onto something.

Thank you so much for joining us on the Angletopia podcast.

The book is The MI5 Archive Official Secrets, published by Thames & Hudson with the National Archives and it is out on September 3rd.

Links will be in the show notes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, or comment and tell us which real-life British spy story fascinates you over on YouTube.

The consensus view at the moment, and I, I have to confess, I am, um, drawing heavily upon conversations with the British Museum Bayeux Tapestry expert, Michael Lewis, who's curating the exhibition.

He's also written a very good book, which has been recently updated with someone called David Musgrove, which is the story of the Bayeux Tapestry, a Thames & Hudson book.

The consensus view is that, yeah, probably Odo is the front runner, and he's-- clearly it's a, a member of the Norman elite has commissioned it, and probably it's Odo, because, as you say, later on, the first actual mention of the tapestry comes much later, centuries later, in an inventory in the fifteenth century at Bayeux Cathedral.

Um, in terms of who designs it and who makes it, then we're into slightly more complex territory.

She's also an emerging children's book author and illustrator who loves writing non-fiction books that are fun.

Her first picture book is coming out with Thames & Hudson in 2027.

Now today we are flipping the tables.

Because Protector of Beyond is finally out in the world, Jennifer is actually going to interview me.