I initially had a few reservations about Schott’s Original Miscellany. After all, wasn’t it just one of those funny fact books that people with knitted loo-roll covers place in the toilet? But when you see it – when you get your hands on it and investigate its pages – everything changes. It feels wonderfully archaic and traditional in a really reassuring way – the paper is good quality, the binding is luxurious, the art resembles the woodcut work of Eric Gill. And the facts within it aren’t just funny trivia – they’re actually significantly useful piece of information, fragments of literary interest, selections of philosophical quotes. Maybe it’s just a trivial little book to help make the self-satisfied middle-classes feel more witty and interesting… But it doesn’t matter. I’m a fan…
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