Value

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.

About the Author

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.