An Elderly Librarian?

But very little is known about Ben Schott, the book’s author, designer and researcher. Who is he? An elderly librarian with half-moon spectacles and cobwebs in his hair?”
— The Daily Telegraph

Ben was born in North London in 1974. He was educated at University College School, Hampstead, and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge where he read Social & Political Sciences. He graduated in 1996, taking a double First.

After an astonishingly brief ‘career’ at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, Ben spent most of his twenties as a freelance portrait photographer for a diverse range of editorial and commercial clients.

As a photographer Ben worked with The Independent, The Times, The Sunday Times, Reader’s Digest, and Sunday Business, amongst many others, and has photographed a wealth of celebrities from Hugh Grant and Tony Blair, to Gordon Brown and Enoch Powell.

In 2002, Ben turned a Christmas card into his first book – Schott’s Original Miscellany – which within weeks was a bestseller. He has subsequently published a series of Miscellanies and Almanacs which have sold some 3 million copies, and have been translated in 21 languages.

As a journalist, Ben has worked with many of the great British titles; he now writes for the Times of London and the New York Times.

[More on Ben's publishing, journalism, photography, and design can be seen by clicking on the menu items above.]

Married to Pavia Rosati (the founder of the travel website Fathom), Ben divides his time between London and New York.

(He finds writing in the third-person awkward.)