Ben Schott

Ben was born in 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 – and the book Schottenfreude – which together have sold some 2.5 million copies, in 21 languages (including Braille).

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In 2018, he published his first novel — Jeeves & The King of Clubs — an authorized homage to P. G. Wodehouse, which received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. The sequel — Jeeves & The Leap of Faith — was published in October 2020, to equal applause.

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His latest book, Schott’s Significa, unlocks the language, signs, jargon, and gestures of the invisible subcultures that suffuse our lives — from graffiti writers, gondoliers, and gym rats to spies, sneakerheads, and Swifties.

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Ben has written for many of the great British and American titles including The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, The Spectator, Town & Country, Condé Nast Traveler, The Guardian, Private Eye, Reader’s Digest, The Paris Review, Bloomberg Opinion, Bon Appétit, Portfolio, Inc., The Paris Review, and Playboy.

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Unusually, Ben designs and typesets virtually all of his work – as well offering design and narrative consultancy to a range of clients.

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He is married to the award-winning travel editor, Pavia Rosati; lives and works in London; and finds writing in the third-person awkward.