Edinburgh International Book Festival: Simon Garfield

Simon Garfield is the author of On the Map, which charts the impact of maps on world history and on our daily lives. He takes his Edinburgh audience on a journey around the world and across the centuries in a presentation that is interactive, visually dazzling and teeming with trivia.

He begins by lamenting the loss of emotional connections which digital mapping has left behind. Computerised maps may be more accurate than their forebears, he concedes, but they can also be homogenous.

As Garfield demonstrates, accuracy wasn’t always at the forefront of early cartographers’ minds. For over 250 years, even the most highly regarded mapmakers of London and Amsterdam depicted California as an island. It was only when someone tried to sail across it that reality hit home. Garfield likens this mistake to today’s Wikipedia effect, where an error – honest or otherwise – can find its way into a million school essays, until finally corrected.

One map that was all too accurate had severe and prolonged consequences for an entire continent. The 1749 depiction of Africa by a French cartographer was notable for its honest lack of detail. The almost blank canvas fired the curiosity of explorers and the appetites of colonisers. As Garfield notes, the blank canvas didn’t last long.

A happier note is struck with the appearance of Harry Beck’s ingenious cartographical creation. Unsurprisingly, Beck’s London Underground is the most reproduced map in the world, and Garfield demonstrates its influence on other metro systems, and on realms completely unrelated to transport. There is now, for example, a strikingly similar map of typefaces, while another depicts the Daily Mail’s ‘moral underground’ (almost every stop features cancer).

The packed tent in Charlotte Square is testimony to the interest generated by maps. But it took the exposure of an audacious criminal before many of the world’s great libraries understood the real value of their cartographical treasures. Garfield recounts the story of Edward Forbes Smiley, who was imprisoned after $2m worth of stolen maps were discovered in his home. Smiley had travelled across America and to the British Library in London to ‘rescue’ priceless maps from their dusty repositories, and sell them to unsuspecting map collectors. In one of the curious details of cartographical history, Smiley might never have been caught, but for the fact that he had a cold: a sharp-eyed librarian spotted the weapon of maps destruction – a tiny razor blade – which fell out of his handkerchief as Smiley blew his nose.

Asked about the future of map-making, Garfield suggests the next frontier is already upon us, with user-generated cartography featuring personal landmarks and points of interest. So, in a fitting turn of the sphere, perhaps those emotional connections might be making a comeback to the wonderful world of maps.