Overview

Secrets and maps are a match made in heaven. A Second World War military plan of a cave system covered with red stamps, a tatty hand-drawn treasure map marked with an 'X', or even your personal phone screen showing a precise 'blue dot' location. These maps contain confidential, coded, precious or private locational information and have, as a result, been hidden away or even falsified to preserve the advantage of ownership. This beautifully illustrated and deeply original book tells the story of how maps, secrets and the data they betray, have come together in western culture over the past six centuries. It uncovers the key clandestine workings of imperial secrets, state secrecy, wider secrets within societies and more recent concepts of personal privacy. Combining the intrigue, excitement and danger that drives human fascination with secrets and the peculiar revelatory thrill that maps give us, it is an essential story with an unsettling edge.

Full Product Details

9780712355643

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Every map conceals and simultaneously reveals knowledge. The brilliance of Secret Maps is to show how this paradox lies at the heart of not just mapping, but humanity’s obsession with making and decoding secrets at the level of states, empires, societies and even individuals. Extraordinary in its range and depth, from Henry VIII’s coastal maps to Treasure Islands, the Western Front and the Cold War, this beguiling survey of secret maps charts new directions in map history”. Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in 12 Maps and Four Points of the Compass.

Author Information

Tom Harper is Lead Curator in the British Library's Map Department. In this volume he works alongside his fellow Curators Nick Dykes and Magdalena Peszko. All three are curating the Library's forthcoming Secret Maps exhibition.

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