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Take Note: A Nimble History of Shorthand
Not yet published
Expected 5 Nov 26'Reveals fascinating truths about history - my favourite kind of book' SATHNAM SANGHERA
'A delightful and moving account of our efforts to capture the truth as it speeds by' TIM HARFORD
A secret script? A memory-boosting tool? What exactly is shorthand?
Cicero's scribe invented it. Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens and even Astrid Lindgren used it. Rivalries, adulteries and actual martyrdoms arose from it. Spycraft was reliant on it, courtroom dramas were changed by it, and feminism has an uneasy debt to it. But today, its continuing existence is at risk. So, what exactly is shorthand? What has it given us? And what would we lose if this world-changing technology disappeared?
Andrew Hill follows the story from the scribes of Ancient Rome to today's takeover of AI, revealing how a system of symbols invented to speedily transcribe speech shaped the modern world and can still offer a valuable way to record, store and recall our brightest ideas today.
'A delightful and moving account of our efforts to capture the truth as it speeds by' TIM HARFORD
A secret script? A memory-boosting tool? What exactly is shorthand?
Cicero's scribe invented it. Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens and even Astrid Lindgren used it. Rivalries, adulteries and actual martyrdoms arose from it. Spycraft was reliant on it, courtroom dramas were changed by it, and feminism has an uneasy debt to it. But today, its continuing existence is at risk. So, what exactly is shorthand? What has it given us? And what would we lose if this world-changing technology disappeared?
Andrew Hill follows the story from the scribes of Ancient Rome to today's takeover of AI, revealing how a system of symbols invented to speedily transcribe speech shaped the modern world and can still offer a valuable way to record, store and recall our brightest ideas today.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication November 5, 2026
About the author
Andrew Hill
3 books8 followersI'm an award-winning journalist, writer and public speaker.
My next book is Take Note: A Nimble History of Shorthand (Profile, November 2026), which tells the 2,000 year story of the workplace technology used by spies, statesmen, suffragettes and secretaries. I still write shorthand - though not at the 130 words per minute speed I once boasted.
My book Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World (Pallas Athene, 2019) is a personal exploration of the life, work and influence of the Victorian polymath, which was awarded The Ruskin Society Book Prize in 2020.
I also take a deep interest in how organisations are run and led - and how they'll be run and led in the future. My book Leadership in the Headlines (2016) is a collection of some of my Financial Times columns on global business, strategy, leadership and management.
From 2011 to 2022, I was the FT's Management Editor, and I am now the FT's Senior Business Writer and Consulting Editor for FT Live. You'll find links to some of my FT book reviews here on Goodreads. I also launched and still help to run the FT's Business Book of the Year Award.
Beyond journalism, I have been a trustee of the Ruskin Foundation and served as chair of the Blueprint Trust, the charity behind Blueprint for Better Business, which supports and challenges business to be a force for good.
My next book is Take Note: A Nimble History of Shorthand (Profile, November 2026), which tells the 2,000 year story of the workplace technology used by spies, statesmen, suffragettes and secretaries. I still write shorthand - though not at the 130 words per minute speed I once boasted.
My book Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World (Pallas Athene, 2019) is a personal exploration of the life, work and influence of the Victorian polymath, which was awarded The Ruskin Society Book Prize in 2020.
I also take a deep interest in how organisations are run and led - and how they'll be run and led in the future. My book Leadership in the Headlines (2016) is a collection of some of my Financial Times columns on global business, strategy, leadership and management.
From 2011 to 2022, I was the FT's Management Editor, and I am now the FT's Senior Business Writer and Consulting Editor for FT Live. You'll find links to some of my FT book reviews here on Goodreads. I also launched and still help to run the FT's Business Book of the Year Award.
Beyond journalism, I have been a trustee of the Ruskin Foundation and served as chair of the Blueprint Trust, the charity behind Blueprint for Better Business, which supports and challenges business to be a force for good.
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