Value

Description

Since the industrial revolution, when everything ran by clockwork, people have understood how important it is to live in the moment. But over time our world has grown increasingly busy, and we’ve lost our ability to truly savour each unique experience and the simple pleasures the world has to offer.

Cultural commentator and critic Stephen Bayley seeks to explain what real value is: it’s about taking the time and making the effort to appreciate things, of understanding the permanent charm of modest daily rituals performed with care and feeling. Of caring about appearances and meaning. Of being bold in matters of taste. Of fully understanding the source of lasting pleasure. Of making every encounter with an object or person meaningful.

Value is an elegiac account of what’s recently been lost in the digital apocalypse. But also an enthusiastic anticipation of what we can regain in a post-viral, more analogue and more thoughtful world.

Stephen Bayley is one of the world’s best known commentators on modern culture. In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s top artistic honour, by the French Minister of Culture. Stephen Bayley has been a design consultant working on imaginative communications projects for Ford, Jaguar, Fiat, Audi and BMW amongst others, and wrote the creative strategy for Mercedes-Benz’ advertisments. He has written extensively for Car magazine. Stephen was awarded PPA Columnist of the Year for his car column in GQ (which ran for about eight years) and he wrote very popular regular car columns for the Daily Telegraph and Management Today. He is also well-known as an outspoken commentator on art and design and has contributed to the Times, the Daily Mail, the Observer, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Spectator, the Los Angeles Times, High Life, New Statesman, the Independent, and the Independent on Sunday as well as many trade and professional publications.

‘Stephen Bayley is the English answer to Tom Wolfe, as suave, iconoclastic, witty, visually perceptive’ Fiona MacCarthy

‘He has the knack of getting ahead of everybody with values that turn out to be permanent’ Clive James

‘He has the attention span of an acid-crazed hummingbird hawkmoth, but when he craps, it glows’ Sir Terence Conran

A fiercely witty polemic . . . Amusing, erudite, insightful—Daily MailWitty, astringent primer for life . . . Bayley is a dazzling writer, by turns elegant, iconoclastic and wickedly subversive, and with a style and panache that rivals his favourite household objects—Michael Simkins, Mail on SundayThe joy (and depth) of this book is how Bayley has come to appreciate the spiritual value of things big and small—Roger Lewis, Telegraph

Additional information

Dimensions	1 × 5.75 × 8.875 in
Imprint	Constable
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09781472134912
ISBN-10	1472134915
Author	Stephen Bayley
Audience	General / adult