Analogue Epilogue: In Search of Lost Things

This is an irreverent account of a life spent - perhaps even over-spent - with privileged access to a material world now disappearing like an island in the mist.

It is not a conventional memoir, but a catalogue of the buildings, products, places, cars and designers who created the beautiful analogue culture which defined the late twentieth century: a personal, opinionated narrative of a (temporarily) lost world.

Stephen Bayley - for whom the term 'design guru' was coined - met the designer of the outrageous '59 Cadillac, most often seen in pink, and knows the designer of the uniquely influential iPhone of 2007. And he met most of the great architects and designers in between.

But this is not a sentimental elegy, more an emphatic argument for caring about and seeing the man-made world, a skill many are now losing. In this book, cars are treated like art, architecture is treated like cars, food and drink are proxies of religion and nothing is more important than laying the table and lighting candles.

Chapters include : Trump and I, Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce, For the love of a saucepan, Let me tell you about the 911, My criminal stain, The shaman of Milan, Welsh rain, My Dagenham dustbin, Beauty is addictive, The man in a white suit and B747 cocktails.