Whole world in his hands: a fascinating story of globes and globemaking

Despite the subtitle of this fascinating book, it soon turns into an account of how Peter Bellerby’s obsession eventually led to a considerable personal triumph. Unable to find a worthy 80th birthday present for his father, he set out to create a globe himself, which led him to found Bellerby & Co, ‘the only fully bespoke globemakers in the world’. His chatty style sometimes seems at odds with the meticulous professionalism of his work, which in due course led to him selling his car and his share in a house in north London.

There was nothing easy about the process of establishing the company. Requirements included ‘knowledge and skill in engineering, geographical knowledge, and artistic ability in painting’, not to mention financial acumen. The sequence in which the details of this large subject are treated seems a bit of a jumble, but this hardly matters since the interest of the text will keep the reader going.