Discussion of book design has made me check whether or not Ron Costley, the former  designer at Faber and Faber, is still alive.   Sadly, he’s not.   He died in March last year.   He it was who introduced me to the pleasures of book design and how images can and should be combined with page layout, paying close attention to the content of the text.   In order to do the design of The Building of Castle Howard, we spent a day walking round the estate, so that he could get a feel for its history,  which then informed the design of the text.   I hadn’t realised also the extent to which he collaborated with Ian Hamilton Finlay on the typographic episodes of Little Sparta.